LIBRARY 

UNIVERMTY  OF 
CALIFORH1A 

SAN  DIEQO 


The 

Lost  Art  of  Reading 


By 

Gerald  Stanley  Lee 

Author  of  tt  The  Shadow  Christ "  (A  Study  of  the   Hebrew   Poets) 

and  "About  an  Old  New  England  Church  " 

UA   Little  History  " 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  York  and   London 

Cbetnitcfcerbocfcec  press 

1903 


COPYRIGHT,  igoa 

BY 
GERALD  STANLEY  LEE 


Published,  November,  1902 
Reprinted,  January,  1903 ;  November,  1903 


Ube  •Rnlcfcerbocfeer  press,  Hew  ffiorh 


To 
JENNETTE  LEE 


Contents 


BOOK  I 

PAGE 

INTERFERENCES  WITH  THE   READ- 
ING HABIT i 

CIVILISATION 3 

I— Dust    .                3 

II— Dust 5 

III— Dust  to  Dust 8 

IV— Ashes 12 

V— The  Literary  Rush 15 

.    VI— Parenthesis — To  the  Gentle  Reader  .         .  24 

VII— More  Parenthesis— But  More  to  the  Point  28 

VIII — More  Literary  Rush 34 

IX— The  Bugbear  of  Being  Well  Informed— A 

Practical  Suggestion        .         .        .        .41 

X— The  Dead  Level  of  Intelligence         .        .  48 

XI— The  Art  of  Reading  as  One  Likes      .        .  58 


fntccfer* 

cnccs  with 

tbe  rcaMiui 

babit 


Contents 


Hntecfer» 

dices  witb 
tbe  reading 
babit 


THE  DISGRACE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION 

I— On  Wondering  Why  One  Was  Born 
II— The  Top  of  the  Bureau  Principle 


PAGE 
67 

67 

74 


THE     UNPOPULARITY     OF   THE    FIRST 

PERSON  SINGULAR       .         .                 .  82 

I — The  First  Person  a  Necessary  Evil    .        .  82 

II — The  Art  of  Being  Anonymous   ...  89 

III — Egoism  and  Society  .         .                 .  96 

IV— i  +  I  =  We 99 

V — The  Autobiography  of  Beauty   .         .         .  104 

THE    HABIT    OF    NOT   LETTING    ONE'S 

SELF  GO 109 

I — The  Country  Boy  in  Literature  .         .         .  109 

II— The  Subconscious  Self       .        .         .         .115 

III — The  Organic  Principle  of  Inspiration        .  120 


THE  HABIT  OF  ANALYSIS 

I — If  Shakespeare  Came  to  Chicago 
II — Analysis  Analysed 


125 
125 
136 


LITERARY  DRILL  IN  COLLEGE 

I — Seeds  and  Blossoms    . 
II— Private  Road  :  Dangerous . 
Ill — The  Organs  of  Literature  . 


144 
144 
150 
159 


Contents 

PAGE 

IV — Entrance  Examinations  in  Joy  .        .         .  164 

V— Natural  Selection  in  Theory      .         .         .  171 

VI — Natural  Selection  in  Practice    .         .         .  175 

VII— The  Emancipation  of  the  Teacher     .        .  182 

VIII— The  Test  of  Culture 186 

IX— Summary 188 

X— A  Note 194 

LIBRARIES.     WANTED:  AN  OLD-FASH- 
IONED LIBRARIAN       .         .        .         .196 

I — viz 196 

II— cf. 199 

III — et  al.      ........  202 

IV — etc 205 

V— O  212 


BOOK  II 


POSSIBILITIES       .       . 

I — The  Issue 
II— The  First  Selection 
III — Conveniences 
IV— The  Charter  of  Possibility 

V— The  Great  Game  . 
VI — Outward  Bound 


217 
219 

222 
223 
230 

233 
239 


tnterfer* 

encea  with 

tbe  rcaMmj 

babft 


f>oesiblli» 
ties 


Vlll 


The  con* 
f  etsions  of 

an 

unsciens 
tiflc  mini) 


Contents 

BOOK  III 

PAGE 

DETAILS.     THE  CONFESSIONS  OF  AN 

UNSCIENTIFIC  MIND        .  247 


249 
249 

253 


I— UNSCIENTIFIC 

I — On  Being  Intelligent  in  a  Library     . 

II— How  It  Feels 

Ill— How  a  Specialist  Can  Be  an  Educated 

Man 254 

IV — On  Reading  Books  Through  their  Backs  .  258 

V — On  Keeping  Each  Other  in  Countenance .  261 

VI— The  Romance  of  Science   ....  264 

VII — Monads 267 

VIII — Multiplication  Tables         ....  277 

H— READING  FOR  PRINCIPLES      .        .  279 

I — On  Changing  One's  Conscience         .        .  279 

II— On  the  Intolerance  of  Experienced  People  282 

III— On  Having  One's  Experience  Done  Out  .  285 

IV — On  Reading  a  Newspaper  in  Ten  Minutes  289 

V — General  Information 291 

VI— But 299 


m— READING  DOWN  THROUGH 

I — Inside 

II — On  Being  Lonely  with  a  Book  . 


307 
307 
308 


Contents 

PAGE 

III— Keeping  Other  Minds  Off  .        .         .         •     311 
IV— Reading  Backwards 313 

IV— READING  FOR  FACTS          .        .        .319 
I— Calling  the  Meeting  to  Order    .         .         .     319 

II— Symbolic  Facts 323 

III— Duplicates  :  A  Principle  of  Economy       .     325 

V— READING  FOR  RESULTS      .        .        .329 

I— The  Blank  Paper  Frame  of  Mind      .         .     329 

II— The  Usefully  Unfinished    .        .        .        -334 

III— Athletics 340 

VI— READING  FOR  FEELINGS  .        .    347 

I— The  Passion  of  Truth.         .  -347 

II— The  Topical  Point  of  View        .        .         .352 

VII— READING  THE  WORLD  TOGETHER  359 

I— Focusing 359 

II — The  Human  Unit 364 

III— The  Higher  Cannibalism  ....  367 

IV— Spiritual  Thrift 378 

V— The  City,  the  Church,  and  the  College  .  384 

VI— The  Outsiders 389 

VII— Reading  the  World  Together  .  .  -397 


IX 


Cbe  con* 
f  cssions  of 

an 

unsciena 
tiflc  mine 


IClbat  to 
to  ncit 


Contents 


BOOK  IV 

WHAT  TO  DO  NEXT  .       - 

I— See  Next  Chapter 
II— Diagnosis    .... 
Ill— Eclipse        .... 
IV — Apocalypse 

V— Every  Man  His  Own  Genius 
VI — An  Inclined  Plane 
VII— Aliens 


PAGE 

•  403 

•  405 
.  410 
.  412 

•  419 
.  426 

•  430 

•  435 


Book  I 
interferences  witb  tbe  IReafcina  Ibabit 


The  First  Interference: 
Civilisation 


I  SEE  the  ships,"  said  The  Eavesdropper, 
as  he  stole  round  the  world  to  me,  "  on 
a  dozen  sides  of  the  world.  I  hear  them  fight- 
ing with  the  sea." 

' '  And  what  do  you  see  on  the  ships  ? "  I 
said. 

"  Figures  of  men  and  women — thousands  of 
figures  of  men  and  women." 

"  And  what  are  they  doing  ?  " 

"  They  are  walking  fiercely,"  he  said, — 
"  some  of  them, — walking  fiercely  up  and  down 
the  decks  before  the  sea." 

"Why?"  said  I. 

' '  Because  they  cannot  stand  still  and  look  at 


Bust 


Xost  Hrt  of 


oust        it.     Others  are  reading  in  chairs  because  they 
cannot  sit  still  and  look  at  it." 

"And  there  are  some,"   said  The  Eaves- 
dropper,  "with  roofs  of  boards  above  their 
heads  (to  protect  them  from  Wonder) — down 
in  the  hold — playing  cards." 
There  was  silence. 

' '  What  are  you  seeing  now  ?  "  I  said. 

"  Trains,"  he  said — "  a  globe  full  of  trains. 
They  are  on  a  dozen  sides  of  it.  They  are 
clinging  to  the  crusts  of  it — mountains — rivers 
— prairies — some  in  the  light  and  some  in  the 
dark — creeping  through  space." 

1 '  And  what  do  you  see  in  the  trains  ?  ' ' 

"  Miles  of  faces." 

"  And  the  faces  ?" 

"  They  are  pushing  on  the  trains." 


G 


"  What  are  you  seeing  now  ? "  I  said. 

"  Cities,"  he  said — "  streets  of  cities — miles 
of  streets  of  cities." 

"  And  what  do  you  see  in  the  streets  of 
cities?" 

"  Men,  women,  and  smoke." 

' '  And  what  are  the  men  and  women  doing  ?  ' ' 

"  Hurrying,"  said  he. 

"Where?"  said  I. 

"  God  knows." 


H)ust 

II  - 
Dust 

The  population  of  the  civilised  world  to-  H>uat 
day  may  be  divided  into  two  classes, —  mil- 
lionaires and  those  who  would  like  to  be 
millionaires.  The  rest  are  artists,  poets, 
tramps,  and  babies — and  do  not  count.  Poets 
and  artists  do  not  count  until  after  they  are 
dead.  Tramps  are  put  in  prison.  Babies  are 
expected  to  get  over  it.  A  few  more  summers, 
a  few  more  winters— with  short  skirts  or  with 
down  on  their  chins — they  shall  be  seen  bur- 
rowing with  the  rest  of  us.  Q 

One  almost  wonders  sometimes,  why  it  is 
that  the  sun  keeps  on  year  after  year  and  day 
after  day  turning  the  globe  around  and  around, 
heating  it  and  lighting  it  and  keeping  things 
growing  on  it,  when  after  all,  when  all  is  said 
and  done  (crowded  with  wonder  and  with 
things  to  live  with,  as  it  is),  it  is  a  compara- 
tively empty  globe.  No  one  seems  to  be  using 
it  very  much,  or  paying  very  much  attention 
to  it,  or  getting  very  much  out  of  it.  There 
are  never  more  than  a  very  few  men  on  it  at  a 
time,  who  can  be  said  to  be  really  living  on  it. 
They  are  engaged  in  getting  a  living  and  in 
hoping  that  they  are  going  to  live  sometime. 
They  are  also  going  to  read  sometime. 

When  one  thinks  of  the  wasted  sunrises  and 
sunsets — the  great  free  show  of  heaven — the 


OLost  Hrt  ot 


door  open  every  night — of  the  little  groups  of 
people  straggling  into  it — of  the  swarms  of 
people  hurrying  back  and  forth  before  it, 
jostling  their  getting-a-living  lives  up  and 
down  before  it,  not  knowing  it  is  there, — one 
wonders  why  it  is  there.  Why  does  it  not  fall 
upon  us,  or  its  lights  go  suddenly  out  upon  us  ? 
We  stand  in  the  days  and  the  nights  like  stalls 
— suns  flying  over  our  heads,  stars  singing 
through  space  beneath  our  feet.  But  we  do 
not  see.  Every  man's  head  in  a  pocket, — bor- 
ing for  his  living  in  a  pocket — or  being  bored 
for  his  living  in  a  pocket, — why  should  he  see  ? 
True  we  are  not  without  a  philosophy  for  this 
— to  look  over  the  edge  of  our  stalls  with. 
"  Getting  a  living  is  living,"  we  say.  We 
whisper  it  to  ourselves — in  our  pockets.  ^Then 
we  try  to  get  it.  When  we  get  it,  we  try  to 
believe  it — and  when  we  get  it  we  do  not  be- 
lieve anything.  Let  every  man  under  the 
walled-in  heaven,  the  iron  heaven,  speak  for 
his  own  soul.  No  one  else  shall  speak  for 
him.  We  only  know  what  we  know — each  of 
us  in  our  own  pockets.  i/The  great  books  tell 
us  it  has  not  always  been  an  iron  heaven  or  a 
walled-in  heaven.  But  into  the  faces  of  the 
flocks  of  the  children  that  come  to  us,  year 
after  year,  we  look,  wondering.  They  shall 
not  do  anything  but  burrowing — most  of  them. 
Our  very  ideals  are  burrowings.  So  are  our 
books.  Religion  burrows.  It  barely  so  much 
as  looks  at  heaven.  Why  should  a  civilised  man 


S)U8t 

— a  man  who  has  a  pocket  in  civilisation —  s>ust 
a  man  who  can  burrow — look  at  heaven  ?  It 
is  the  glimmering  boundary  line  where  burrow- 
ing leaves  off.  Time  enough.  In  the  mean- 
time the  shovel.  Let  the  stars  wheel.  Do 
men  look  at  stars  with  shovels  ? 

The  faults  of  our  prevailing  habits  of  read- 
ing are  the  faults  of  our  lives.  Any  criticism 
of  our  habit  of  reading  books  to-day,  which 
actually  or  even  apparently  confines  itself  to 
the  point,  is  unsatisfactory.  A  criticism  of  the 
reading  habit  of  a  nation  is  a  criticism  of  its 
civilisation. K  To  sketch  a  scheme  of  defence 
for  the  modern  human  brain,  from  the  kinder- 
garten stage  to  Commencement  day,  is  merely 
a  way  of  bringing  the  subject  of  education  up, 
and  dropping  it  where  it  begins.  Q 

Even  if  the  youth  of  the  period,  as  a  live, 
human,  reading  being  (on  the  principles  to  be 
laid  down  in  the  following  pages),  is  so  fortu- 
nate as  to  succeed  in  escaping  the  dangers  and 
temptations  of  the  home — even  if  he  contrives 
to  run  the  gauntlet  of  the  grammar  school  and 
the  academy — even  if,  in  the  last,  longest,  and 
hardest  pull  of  all,  he  succeeds  in  keeping  a 
spontaneous  habit  with  books  in  spite  of  a  col- 
lege course,  the  story  is  not  over.  Civilisation 
waits  for  him  —  all-enfolding,  all-instructing 
civilisation,  and  he  stands  face  to  face — book 
in  hand — with  his  last  chance. 


%ost  Hrt  of 


Bust 

to 
Bust 


III 

Duet  to  Bust 

Whatever  else  may  be  said  of  our  present 
civilisation,  one  must  needs  go  very  far  in  it  to 
see  Abraham  at  his  tent's  door,  waiting  for 
angels.  And  yet,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
reading  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  books 
that  the  world  has  always  called  worth  read- 
ing, if  ever  there  was  a  type  of  a  gentleman 
and  scholar  in  history,  and  a  Christian,  and  a 
man  of  possibilities,  founder  and  ruler  of 
civilisations,  it  is  this  same  man  Abraham 
at  his  tent's  door  waiting  for  angels./  Have 
we  any  like  him  now?  Perad venture  there 
shall  be  twenty  ?  Perad  venture  there  shall 
be  ten?  Where  is  the  man  who  feels  that 
he  is  free  to-day  to  sit  upon  his  steps  and  have 
a  quiet  think,  unless  there  floats  across  the 
spirit  of  his  dream  the  sweet  and  reassuring 
sound  of  some  one  making  a  tremendous  din 
around  the  next  corner — a  band,  or  a  new  liter- 
ary journal,  or  a  historical  novel,  or  a  special 
correspondent,  or  a  new  club  or  church  or 
something?  Until  he  feels  that  the  world  is 
being  conducted  for  him,  that  things  are  toler- 
ably not  at  rest,  where  shall  one  find  in  civili- 
sation, in  this  present  moment,  a  man  who  is 
ready  to  stop  and  look  about  him — to  take  a 
spell  at  last  at  being  a  reasonable,  contempla- 
tive, or  even  marriageable  being  ? 


Dust  to  Dust 


The    essential    unmarriageableness   of    the        Dust 
modern  man   and  the  unreadableness  of  his 
books  are  two  facts  that  work  very  well  to- 
gether. 

When  Emerson  asked  Bronson  Alcott 
"  What  have  you  done  in  the  world,  what 
have  you  written  ?  "  the  answer  of  Alcott,  "  If 
Pythagoras  came  to  Concord  whom  would  he 
ask  to  see  ? ' '  was  a  diagnosis  of  the  whole 
nineteenth  century.  It  was  a  very  short  sen- 
tence, but  it  was  a  sentence  to  found  a  college 
with,  to  build  libraries  out  of,  to  make  a  whole 
modern  world  read,  to  fill  the  weary  and  heed- 
less heart  of  it — for  a  thousand  years. 

We  have  plenty  of  provision  made  for  books 
in  civilisation,  but  if  civilisation  should  ever 
have  another  man  in  the  course  of  time  who 
knows  how  to  read  a  book,  it  would  not  know 
what  to  do  with  him.  (No  provision  is  made 
for  such  a  man.  We  have  nothing  but  li- 
braries—  monstrous  libraries  to  lose  him  in. 
The  books  take  up  nearly  all  the  room  in 
civilisation,  and  civilisation  takes  up  the  rest. 
The  man  is  not  allowed  to  peep  in  civilisation. 
He  is  too  busy  in  being  ordered  around  by 
it  to  know  that  he  would  like  to.  It  does 
not  occur  to  him  that  he  ought  to  be  allowed 
time  in  it  to  know  who  he  is,  before  he  dies. 
The  typical  civilised  man  is  an  exhausted, 
spiritually  hysterical  man  because  he  has  no 
idea  of  what  it  means,  or  can  be  made  to  mean 
to  a  man,  to  face  calmly  with  his  whole  life  a 


%ost  Hrt  of  IReaoino 


JDuat 

to 
Duet 


great  book,  a  few  minutes  every  day,  to  rest 
back  on  his  ideals  in  it,  to  keep  office  hours 
with  his  own  soul. 

The  practical  value  of  a  book  is  the  inherent 
energy  and  quietness  of  the  ideals  in  it — the 
immemorial  way  ideals  have — have  always  had 
— of  working  themselves  out  in  a  man,  of  doing 
the  work  of  the  man  and  of  doing  their  own 
work  at  the  same  time. 

Inasmuch  as  ideals  are  what  all  real  books 
are  written  with  and  read  with,  and  inasmuch 
as  ideals  are  the  only  known  way  a  human 
being  has  of  resting,  in  this  present  world,  it 
would  be  hard  to  think  of  any  book  that  would 
be  more  to  the  point  in  this  modern  civilisation 
than  a  book  that  shall  tell  men  how  to  read  to 
live, — how  to  touch  their  ideals  swiftly  every 
day.  *\  Any  book  that  should  do  this  for  us 
would  touch  life  at  more  points  and  flow  out 
on  men's  minds  in  more  directions  than  any 
other  that  could  be  conceived.  It  would  con- 
tribute as  the  June  day,  or  as  the  night  for 
sleep,  to  all  men's  lives,  to  all  of  the  problems 
of  all  of  the  world  at  once.  It  would  be  a 
night  latch — to  the  ideal. 

Whatever  the  remedy  may  be  said  to  be,  one 
thing  is  certainly  true  with  regard  to  our  read- 
ing habits  in  modern  times.  Men  who  are 
habitually  shamefaced  or  absent-minded  be- 
fore the  ideal — that  is,  before  the  actual  nature 
of  things — cannot  expect  to  be  real  readers  of 
books.  They  can  only  be  what  most  men 


H>ust  to  Bust 


are  nowadays,  merely  busy  and  effeminate, 
running-and-reading  sort  of  men  —  rushing 
about  propping  up  the  universe.  Men  who 
cannot  trust  the  ideal — the  nature  of  things, — 
and  who  think  they  can  do  better,  are  natu- 
rally kept  very  busy,  and  as  they  take  no  time 
to  rest  back  on  their  ideals  they  are  naturally 
very  tiredY  The  result  stares  at  us  on  every 
hand.  Whether  in  religion,  art,  education,  or 
public  affairs,  we  do  not  stop  to  find  our  ideals 
for  the  problems  that  confront  us.  We  do 
not  even  look  at  them.  Our  modern  problems 
are  all  Jerichos  to  us — most  of  them  paper 
ones.  We  arrange  symposiums  and  processions 
around  them  and  shout  at  them  and  march  up 
and  down  before  them.  Modern  prophecy  is 
the  blare  of  the  trumpet.  Modern  thought  is 
a  crowd  hurrying  to  and  fro.  Civilisation  is 
the  dust  we  scuffle  in  each  other's  eyes. 

When  the  peace  and  strength  of  spirit  with 
which  the  walls  of  temples  are  builded  no 
longer  dwell  in  them,  the  stones  crumble. 
Temples  are  built  of  eon-gathered  and  eon- 
rested  stones. -^Infinite  nights  and  days  are 
wrought  in  tHem,  and  leisure  and  splendour 
wait  upon  them,  and  visits  of  suns  and  stars, 
and  when  leisure  and  splendour  are  no  more  in 
human  beings'  lives,  and  visits  of  suns  and 
stars  are  as  though  they  were  not,  in  our 
civilisation,  the  walls  of  it  shall  crumble  upon 
us.  If  fulness  and  leisure  and  power  of  living 
are  no  more  with  us,  nothing  shall  save  us. 


Duet 

to 
Duet 


12 


Xost  Bet  ot 


Bsbea 


Walls  of  encyclopaedias  —  not  even  walls  of 
Bibles  shall  save  us,  nor  miles  of  Carnegie- 
library  >"  Empty  and  hasty  and  cowardly  living 
does  not  get  itself  protected  from  the  laws  of 
nature  by  tons  of  paper  and  ink.  The  only 
way  out  for  civilisation  is  through  the  practi- 
cal men  in  it — men  who  grapple  daily  with 
ideals,  who  keep  office  hours  with  their  souls, 
who  keep  hold  of  life  with  books,  who  take 
enough  time  out  of  hurrahing  civilisation 
along — to  live. 

Civilisation  has  been  long  in  building  and 
its  splendour  still  hangs  over  us,  but  Parthenons 
do  not  stand  when  Parthenons  are  no  longer 
being  lived  in  Greek  men's  souls.  Only  those 
who  have  Coliseums  in  them  can  keep  Coli- 
seums around  them.  The  Ideal  has  its  own 
way.  It  has  it  with  the  very  stones.  It  was 
an  Ideal,  a  vanished  Ideal,  that  made  a  moon- 
light scene  for  tourists  out  of  the  Coliseum — 
out  of  the  Dead  Soul  of  Rome. 

IV 

Hsbes 

*  There  seem  to  be  but  two  fundamental  char- 
acteristic sensibilities  left  alive  in  the  typical, 
callously-civilised  man.  One  of  these  sensibili- 
ties is  the  sense  of  motion  and  the  other  is  the 
sense  of  mass.  If  he  cannot  be  appealed  to 
through  one  of  these  senses,  it  is  of  little  use 


Hsbes  13 

to  appeal  to  him  at  all.  In  proportion  as  he 
is  civilised,  the  civilised  man  can  be  depended 
on  for  two  things.  He  can  always  be  touched 
by  a  hurry  of  any  kind,  and  he  never  fails  to 
be  moved  by  a  crowd.  If  he  can  have  hurry 
and  crowd  together,  he  is  capable  of  almost 
anything.  These  two  sensibilities,  the  sense 
of  motion  and  the  sense  of  mass,  are  all  that  is 
left  of  the  original,  lusty,  tasting  and  seeing 
and  feeling  human  being  who  took  possession 
of  the  earth.  And  even  in  the  case  of  com- 
paratively rudimentary  and  somewhat  stupid 
senses  like  these,  the  sense  of  motion,  with  the 
average  civilised  man,  is  so  blunt  that  he  needs 
to  be  rushed  along  at  seventy  miles  an  hour  to 
have  the  feeling  that  he  is  moving,  and  his 
sense  of  mass  is  so  degenerate  that  he  needs  to 
live  with  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  next 
door  to  know  that  he  is  not  alone.  He  is  seen 
in  his  most  natural  state, — this  civilised  being, 
— with  most  of  his  civilisation  around  him,  in 
the  seat  of  an  elevated  railway  train,  with  a 
crowded  newspaper  before  his  eyes,  and  another 
crowded  newspaper  in  his  lap,  and  crowds  of 
people  reading  crowded  newspapers  standing 
round  him  in  the  aisles;  but  he  can  never  be 
said  to  be  seen  at  his  best,  in  a  spectacle  like 
this,  until  the  spectacle  moves,  until  it  is  felt 
rushing  over  the  sky  of  the  street,  puffing 
through  space;  in  which  delectable  pell-mell 
and  carnival  of  hurry — hiss  in  front  of  it,  shriek 
under  it,  and  dust  behind  it — he  finds,  to  all 


OLost  Hrt  ot  1Reat>m0 


flsbcs 


appearances  at  least,  the  meaning  of  this  present 
world  and  the  hope  of  the  next.~~"Hurry  and 
crowd  have  kissed  each  other  and  his  soul 
rests.  "  If  Abraham  sitting  in  his  tent  door 
waiting  for  angels  had  been  visited  by  a  spec- 
tacle like  this  and  invited  to  live  in  it  all  his 
days,  would  he  not  have  climbed  into  it  cheer- 
fully enough  ?  ' '  asks  the  modern  man.  Living 
in  a  tent  would  have  been  out  of  the  question, 
and  waiting  for  angels — waiting  for  anything, 

/fact — forever  impossible. 
Whatever  else  may  be  said  of  Abraham,  his 
waiting  for  angels  was  the  making  of  him,  and 
the  making  of  all  that  is  good  in  what  has  fol- 
lowed since.  The  man  who  hangs  on  a  strap 
— up  in  the  morning  and  down  at  night,  huny- 
ing  between  the  crowd  he  sleeps  with  and  the 
crowd  he  works  with,  to  the  crowd  that  hurries 
no  more, — even  this  man,  such  as  he  is,  with 
all  his  civilisation  roaring  about  him,  would 
have  been  impossible  if  Abraham  in  the  stately 
and  quiet  days  had  not  waited  at  his  tent  door 
for  angels  to  begin  a  civilisation  with,  or  if  he 
had  been  the  kind  of  Abraham  that  expected 
that  angels  would  come  hurrying  and  scurry- 
ing after  one  in  a  spectacle  like  this.  "  What 
has  a  man,"  says  Blank  in  his  Angels  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century, — "What  has  a  man  who 
consents  to  be  a  knee-bumping,  elbow-jam- 
ming, foothold-struggling  strap-hanger  —  an 
abject  commuter  all  his  days  (for  no  better 
reason  than  that  he  is  not  well  enough  to  keep 


ZTbe  Xiterarg  TRusb 


still  and  that  there  is  not  enough  of  him  to  be 
alone)  —  to  do  with  angels  —  or  to  do  with  any- 
thing, except  to  get  done  with  it  as  fast  as  he 
can  ?  "  So  say  we  all  of  us,  hanging  on  straps 
to  say  it,  swaying  and  swinging  to  oblivion. 
"  Is  there  no  power,"  says  Blank,  "  in  heaven 
above  or  earth  beneath  that  will  help  us  to 
slop?" 

If  a  civilisation  is  founded  on  two  senses  — 
the  sense  of  motion  and  the  sense  of  mass,  — 
one  need  not  go  far  to  find  the  essential  traits 
of  its  literature  and  its  daily  reading  habit. 
There  are  two  things  that  such  a  civilisation 
makes  sure  of  in  all  its  concerns  —  hurry  and 
crowd.  Hence  the  spectacle  before  us  —  the 
literary  rush  and  mobs  of  books. 


V 


IRusb 


The  present  writer,  being  occasionally  ad- 
dicted (like  the  reader  of  this  book)  to  a  seemly 
desire  to  have  the  opinions  of  some  one  besides 
the  author  represented,  has  fallen  into  the  way 
of  having  interviews  held  with  himself  from 
time  to  time,  which  are  afterwards  published  at 
his  own  request.  These  interviews  appear  in 
the  public  prints  as  being  between  a  Mysterious 
Person  and  The  Presiding  Genius  of  the  State  of 
Massachusetts.  The  author  can  only  earnestly 
hope  that  in  thus  generously  providing  for  an 


Ube 
Kterarv 

•Kusb 


i6 


Xost  Brt  of  1Rea£>in0 


literary 
•Kusb 


opposing  point  of  view,  in  taking,  as  it  were, 
the  words  of  the  enemy  upon  his  lips,  he  will 
lose  the  sympathy  of  the  reader.  The  Mys- 
terious Person  is  in  colloquy  with  The  Presid- 
ing Genius  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts.  As 
The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  lives  relentlessly  at  his 
elbow — dogs  every  day  of  his  life, — it  is  hoped 
that  the  reader  will  make  allowance  for  a  cer- 
tain impatient  familiarity  in  the  tone  of  The 
Mysterious  Person  toward  so  considerable  a 
personage  as  The  Presiding  Genius  of  the  State 
of  Massachusetts  —  which  we  can  only  pro- 
foundly regret. 

The  Mysterious  Person :  ' '  There  is  no  escap- 
ing from  it.  Reading-madness  is  a  thing  we 
all  are  breathing  in  to-day  whether  we  will  or 
no,  and  it  is  not  only  in  the  air,  but  it  is  worse 
than  in  the  air.  It  is  underneath  the  founda- 
tions of  the  things  in  which  we  live  and  on 
which  we  stand.  It  has  infected  the  very 
character  of  the  natural  world,  and  the  move- 
ment of  the  planets,  and  the  whirl  of  the  globe 
beneath  our  feet.  Without  its  little  paling  of 
books  about  it,  there  is  hardly  a  thing  that  is 
left  in  this  modern  world  a  man  can  go  to  for 
its  own  sake.  Except  by  stepping  off  the 
globe,  perhaps,  now  and  then  —  practically 
arranging  a  world  of  one's  own,  and  breaking 
with  one's  kind, — the  life  that  a  man  must  live 
to-day  can  only  be  described  as  a  kind  of  eter- 
nal parting  with  himself.  There  is  getting  to 
be  no  possible  way  for  a  man  to  preserve  his 


Ube 


TRusb 


five  spiritual  senses  —  even  his  five  physical 
ones — and  be  a  member,  in  good  and  regular 
standing,  of  civilisation  at  the  same  time. 

"  If  civilisation  and  human  nature  are  to 
continue  to  be  allowed  to  exist  together  there 
is  but  one  way  out,  apparently  —  an  extra 
planet  for  all  of  us,  one  for  a  man  to  live  on 
and  the  other  for  him  to  be  civilised  on." 

P.  G.  S.  of  M.:  "But " 

"As  long  as  we,  who  are  the  men  and  women 
of  the  world,  are  willing  to  continue  our  pres- 
ent fashion  of  giving  up  living  in  order  to  get 
a  living,  one  planet  will  never  be  large  enough 
for  us.  If  we  can  only  get  our  living  in  one 
place  and  have  it  to  live  with  in  another,  the 
question  is,  To  whom  does  this  present  planet 
belong — the  people  who  spend  their  days  in 
living  into  it  and  enjoying  it,  or  the  people 
who  never  take  time  to  notice  the  planet,  who 
do  not  seem  to  know  that  they  are  living  on  a 
planet  at  all?" 

P.  G.  S.  ofM.:  "But " 

"  I  may  not  be  very  well  informed  on  very 
many  things,  but  I  am  very  sure  of  one  of 
them,"  said  The  Mysterious  Person,  "  and  that 
is,  that  this  present  planet — this  one  we  are 
living  on  now — belongs  by  all  that  is  fair  and 
just  to  those  who  are  really  living  on  it,  and 
that  it  should  be  saved  and  kept  as  a  sacred 
and  protected  place — a  place  where  men  shall 
be  able  to  belong  to  the  taste  and  colour  and 
meaning  of  things  and  to  God  and  to  them- 


-Cbe 

literary 
1Ru0b 


i8 


OLost  Hrt  ot 


Vbe 

literary 
•Kusb 


selves.  If  people  want  another  planet  —  a 
planet  to  belong  to  Society  on, — let  them  go 
out  and  get  it. 

"  Look  at  our  literature — current  literature. 
It  is  a  mere  headlong,  helpless  literary  rush 
from  beginning  to  end.  All  that  one  can  ex- 
tract from  it  is  getting  to  be  a  kind  of  general 
sound  of  going.  We  began  gently  enough. 
We  began  with  the  annual.  We  had  Poor 
Richard's  Almanac.  Then  we  had  the  quar- 
terly. A  monthly  was  reasonable  enough  in 
course  of  time;  so  we  had  monthlies.  Then 
the  semi-monthly  came  to  ease  our  liter- 
ary nerves;  and  now  the  weekly  magazine 
stumbles,  rapt  and  wistful,  on  the  heels  of  men 
of  genius.  It  makes  contracts  for  prophecy. 
Unborn  poems  are  sold  in  the  open  market. 
The  latest  thoughts  that  thinkers  have,  the 
trend  of  the  thoughts  they  are  going  to  have 
— the  public  makes  demand  for  these.  It  gets 
them.  Then  it  cries  '  More!  More! '  Where 
is  the  writer  who  does  not  think  with  the 
printing-press  hot  upon  his  track,  and  the 
sound  of  the  pulp-mill  making  paper  for  his 
poems,  and  the  buzz  of  editors,  instead  of  the 
music  of  the  spheres  ?  Think  of  the  destruc- 
tion to  American  forests,  the  bare  and  glaring 
hills  that  face  us  day  and  night,  all  for  a  liter- 
ature like  this — thousands  of  square  miles  of  it, 
spread  before  our  faces,  morning  after  morn- 
ing, week  after  week,  through  all  this  broad 
and  glorious  land  !  Seventy  million  souls  — 


brothers  of  yours  and  mine — walking  through 
prairies  of  pictures  Sunday  after  Sunday,  flick- 
ered at  by  head-lines,  deceived  by  adjectives, 
each  with  his  long  day's  work,  column  after 
column,  sentence  after  sentence,  plodding — 
plodding — plodding  down  to .  My  geo- 
graphy may  be  wrong;  the  general  direction  is 
right." 

"  But  don't  you  believe  in  newspapers?  " 

"  Why,  yes,  in  the  abstract;  newspapers. 
But  we  do  not  have  any  news  nowadays.  It  is 
not  news  to  know  a  thing  before  it 's  happened, 
nor  is  it  news  to  know  what  might  happen,  or 
why  it  might  happen,  or  why  it  might  not 
happen.  To  be  told  that  it  does  n't  make 
any  difference  whether  it  happens  at  all, 
would  be  news,  perhaps,  to  many  people 
— such  news  as  there  is;  but  it  is  hardly 
worth  while  to  pay  three  cents  to  be  sure  of 
that.  An  intelligent  man  can  be  sure  of  it  for 
nothing.  He  has  been  sure  of  it  every  morn- 
ing for  years.  It 's  the  gist  of  most  of  the 
newspapers  he  reads.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  what  can  be  called  truly  vital  information, 
in  any  larger  sense,  the  only  news  a  daily 
paper  has  is  the  date  at  the  top  of  the  page. 
If  a  man  once  makes  sure  of  that,  if  he  feels 
from  the  bottom  of  his  heart  what  really  good 
news  it  is  that  one  more  day  is  come  in  a  world 
as  beautiful  as  this, — the  rest  of  it " 

P.  G.  S.  of  M.:  "But " 

"  The  rest  of  it,  if  it  's  true,  is  hardly  worth 


•Cbc 

literary 
•Rueb 


1/ost  art  ot 


Ube 
literary 

tttusb 


knowing;  and  if  it 's  worth  knowing,  it  can  be 
found  better  in  books;  and  if  it  's  not  true — 
'  Every  man  his  own  liar '  is  my  motto.  He 
might  as  well  have  the  pleasure  of  it,  and  he 
knows  how  much  to  believe.  The  same  lung- 
ing, garrulous,  blindly  busy  habit  is  the  law  of 
all  we  do.  Take  our  literary  critical  journals. 
If  a  critic  can  not  tell  what  he  sees  at  once,  he 
must  tell  what  he  fails  to  see  at  once.  The 
point  is  not  his  seeing  or  not  seeing,  nor  any- 
body's seeing  or  not  seeing.  The  point  is  the 
imperative  '  at  once.'  literature  is  getting  to 
be  the  filling  of  orders — time-limited  orders. 
Criticism  is  out  of  a  car  window.  Book  re- 
views are  telegraphed  across  the  sea  (Tenny- 
son's memoirs).  The (Daily) (a 

spectacle  for  Homer !)  begins  a  magazine  to  '  re- 
view in  three  weeks  every  book  of  permanent 
value  that  is  published' — one  of  the  gravest 
and  most  significant  blows  at  literature — one 
of  the  gravest  and  most  significant  signs  of  the 
condition  of  letters  to-day — that  could  be  con- 
ceived !  Three  weeks,  man !  As  if  a  '  book  of 
permanent  value '  had  ever  been  recognised,  as 
yet,  in  three  years,  or  reviewed  in  thirty  years 
(in  any  proper  sense),  or  mastered  in  three 
hundred  years— with  all  the  hurrying  of  this 
hurrying  world !  We  have  no  book-reviewers. 
Why  should  we?  Criticism  begins  where  a 
man's  soul  leaves  off.  It  comes  from  bril- 
liantly-defective minds, — so  far  as  one  can  see, 
— from  men  of  attractively  imperfect  sympa- 


Xiterarg  1Rusb 


thies.  Nordau,  working  himself  into  a  mighty 
wrath  because  mystery  is  left  out  of  his  soul, 
gathering  adjectives  about  his  loins,  stalks  this 
little  fluttered  modern  world,  puts  his  huge, 
fumbling,  hippopotamus  hoof  upon  the  Blessed 
Damozel,  goes  crashing  through  the  press.  He 
is  greeted  with  a  shudder  of  delight.  Even 
Matthew  Arnold,  a  man  who  had  a  way  of  see- 
ing things  almost,  sometimes,  criticises  Emer- 
son for  lack  of  unity,  because  the  unity  was  on 
so  large  a  scale  that  Arnold's  imagination  could 
not  see  it;  and  now  the  chirrup  from  afar,  ris- 
ing from  the  east  and  the  west,  '  Why  doesn't 
George  Meredith  ? '  etc.  People  want  him  to 
put  guide-posts  in  his  books,  apparently,  or 

before  his  sentences:  '  TO '  or  '  TEN  MILES 

TO  THE  NEAREST  VERB' — the  inevitable  fate  of 
any  writer,  man  or  woman,  who  dares  to  ask, 
in  this  present  day,  that  his  reader  shall  stop 
to  think.  If  a  man  cannot  read  as  he  runs,  he 
does  not  read  a  book  at  all.  The  result  is,  he 
ought  to  run ;  that  is  natural  enough ;  and  the 
faster  he  runs,  in  most  books,  the  better." 

At  this  point  The  Mysterious  Person  reached 
out  his  long  arm  from  his  easy-chair  to  some 
papers  that  were  lying  near.  I  knew  too  well 
what  it  meant.  He  began  to  read.  (He  is 
always  breaking  over  into  manuscript  when  he 
talks.) 

"  We  are  forgetting  to  see.  Looking  is  a 
lost  art.  With  our  poor,  wistful,  straining 
eyes,  we  hurry  along  the  days  that  slowly, 


Ube 

literary 
•JRusb 


Xost  Hrt  of 


Ube 


out  of  the  rest  of  heaven,  move  their  stillness 

across  this  little  world.     The  more  we  hurry, 

•Rueb 

the  more  we  read.  Night  and  noon  and  morn- 
ing the  panorama  passes  before  our  eyes.  By 
tables,  on  cars,  and  in  the  street  we  see  them 
— readers,  readers  everywhere,  drinking  their 
blindness  in.  Life  is  a  blur  of  printed  paper. 
We  see  no  more  the  things  themselves.  We 
see  about  them.  We  lose  the  power  to  see 
the  things  themselves.  We  see  in  sentences. 
The  linotype  looks  for  us.  We  know  the 
world  in  columns.  The  sounds  of  the  street 
are  muffled  to  us.  In  papers  up  to  our  ears, 
we  whirl  along  our  endless  tracks.  The  faces 
that  pass  are  phantoms.  In  our  little  wood- 
cut head-line  dream  we  go  ceaseless  on,  turning 
leaves, — days  and  weeks  and  months  of  leaves, 
— wherever  we  go — years  of  leaves.  Boys  who 
never  have  seen  the  sky  above  them,  young 
men  who  have  never  seen  it  in  a  face,  old  men 
who  have  never  looked  out  at  sea  across  a 
crowd,  nor  guessed  the  horizons  there — dead 
men,  the  flicker  of  life  in  their  hands,  not  yet 
beneath  the  roofs  of  graves  —  all  turning 
leaves. ' ' 

The  Mysterious  Person  stopped.  Nobody 
said  anything.  It  is  the  better  way,  generally, 
with  The  Mysterious  Person.  We  were  begin- 
ning to  feel  as  if  he  were  through,  when  his 

eye  fell  on  a  copy  of  The ,  lying  on  the 

floor.  It  was  open  at  an  unlucky  page. 

"  Look  at  that!  "  said  he.     He  handed  the 


Xiterarg  TRusb 


paper  to  The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.,  pointing  with  his 
finger,  rather  excitedly.  The  P.  G.  S.  of  M. 
looked  at  it — read  it  through.  Then  he  put  it 
down ;  The  Mysterious  Person  went  on. 

"Do  you  not  know  what  it  means  when  you, 
a  civilised,  cultivated,  converted  human  being, 
can  stand  face  to  face  with  a  list — a  list  like 
that — a  list  headed  '  BOOKS  OP  THE  WEEK  ' — 
when,  unblinking  and  shameless,  and  without 
a  cry  of  protest,  you  actually  read  it  through, 
without  seeing,  or  seeming  to  see,  for  a  single 
moment  that  right  there  —  right  there  in  that 
list — the  fact  that  there  is  such  a  list — your 
civilisation  is  on  trial  for  its  life — that  any 
society  or  nation  or  century  that  is  shallow 
enough  to  publish  as  many  books  as  that  has 
yet  to  face  the  most  awful,  the  most  unpre- 
cedented, the  most  headlong-coming  crisis  in 
the  history  of  the  human  race  ?  " 

The  Mysterious  Person  made  a  pause — the 
pause  of  settling  things.  [There  are  people 
who  seem  to  think  that  the  only  really  ade- 
quate way  to  settle  a  thing,  in  this  world,  is 
for  them  to  ask  a  question  about  it.] 

At  all  events  The  Mysterious  Person  having 
asked  a  question  at  this  point,  everybody 
might  as  well  have  the  benefit  of  it. 

In  the  meantime,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  in 
the  next  chapter  The  Presiding  Genius  of  the 
State  of  Massachusetts,  or  somebody — will  get 
a  word  in. 


Ube 

literacy 
•Rueb 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaMno 


paten* 

t  bests 
totbe 
Gentle 
IReabcc 


VI 

parentbeste 
(To  tbe  Gentle  IReaber 

This  was  a  footnote  at  first.  It  is  placed  at 
the  top  of  the  page  in  the  hope  that  it  will 
point  at  itself  more  and  let  the  worst  out  at 
once.  I  want  to  say  I  —  a  little  —  in  this 
book. 

I  do  not  propose  to  do  it  very  often.  Indeed 
I  am  not  sure  just  now,  that  I  shall  be  able  to 
do  it  at  all,  but  I  would  like  to  have  the  feel- 
ing as  I  go  along  that  arrangements  have  been 
made  for  it,  and  that  it  is  all  understood,  and 
that  if  I  am  fairly  good  about  it — ring  a  little 
bell  or  something  —  and  warn  people,  I  am 
going  to  be  allowed — right  here  in  my  own 
book  at  least — to  say  I  when  I  want  to. 

I  is  the  way  I  feel  on  the  inside  about  this 
subject.  Anybody  can  see  it.  And  I  want  to 
be  honest,  in  the  first  place,  and  in  the  second 
place  (like  a  good  many  other  people)  I  never 
have  had  what  could  be  called  a  real  good 
chance  to  say  I  in  this  world,  and  I  feel  that 
if  I  had — somehow,  it  would  cure  me. 

I  have  tried  other  ways.  I  have  tried  call- 
ing myself  he.  I  have  stated  my  experiences 
in  principles — called  myself  it,  and  in  the  first 
part  of  this  book  I  have  already  fallen  into  the 
way  —  page  after  page  —  of  borrowing  other 
people,  when  all  the  time  I  knew  perfectly  well 


parentbesis 


(and  everybody)  that  I  preferred  myself.  At  all 
events  this  calling  one's  self  names — now  one 
and  now  another, —  working  one's  way  incog - 
nito,  all  the  way  through  one's  own  book,  is 
not  making  me  as  modest  as  I  had  hoped. 
There  seems  to  be  nothing  for  it — with  some 
of  us,  but  to  work  through  to  modesty  the 
other  way — backward — I  it  out. 

There  is  one  other  reason.  This  Mysterious 
Person  I  have  arranged  with  in  these  opening 
chapters,  to  say  I  for  me,  does  not  seem  to  me 
to  be  doing  it  very  well.  I  think  any  one — any 
fairly  observing  person — would  admit  that  I 
could  do  it  better,  and  if  it 's  going  to  be  done 
at  all,  why  should  a  mere  spiritual  machine — a 
kind  of  moral  phonograph  like  this  Mysterious 
Person — be  put  forward  to  take  the  ignominy 
of  it  ?  I  have  set  my  "  I  "  up  before  me  and 
duly  cross-examined  it.  I  have  said  to  it, 
' '  Either  you  are  good  enough  to  say  I  in  a 
book  or  you  are  not,"  and  my  "  I  "  has  replied 
to  me,  "  If  I  am  not,  I  want  everybody  to  know 

why  and  if  I  am — am . ' '     Well  of  course  he 

is  not,  and  we  will  all  help  him  to  know  why. 
We  will  do  as  we  would  be  done  by.  If  there 
is  ever  going  to  be  any  possible  comfort  in  this 
world  for  me,  in  not  being  what  I  ought  to  be, 
it  is  the  thought  that  I  am  not  the  only  one  that 
knows  it.  At  all  events,  this  feeling  that  the 
worst  is  known,  even  if  one  takes,  as  I  am 
doing  now,  a  planet  for  a  confessional,  gives 
one  a  luxurious  sense — a  sense  of  combined 


paicn« 
tbcets 
to  the 

Gentle 


26 


%ost  Bet  of  IReaoina 


pare  na 
tbtsts 
totbe 
Ocntle 
•Reafcet 


safety  and  irresponsibility  which  would  not  be 
exchanged  for  a  world. 

Every  book  should  have  I-places  in  it — 
breathing-holes — places  where  one's  soul  can 
come  up  to  the  surface  and  look  out  through 
the  ice  and  say  things.  I  do  not  wish  to  seem 
superior  and  I  will  admit  that  I  am  as  respect- 
able as  anybody  in  most  places,  but  I  do  think 
that  if  half  the  time  I  am  devoting,  and  am 
going  to  devote,  to  appearing  as  modest  as 
people  expect  in  this  world,  could  be  devoted 
to  really  doing  something  in  it,  my  little 
modesty — such  as  it  is — would  not  be  missed. 
At  all  events  I  am  persuaded  that  anything — 
almost  anything — would  be  better  than  this 
eternal  keeping  up  appearances  of  all  being  a 
little  less  interested  in  ourselves  than  we  are, 
which  is  what  literature  and  Society  are  for, 
mostly.  We  all  do  it,  more  or  less.  And  yet 
if  there  were  only  a  few  scattered-along  places, 
public  soul-open  places  to  rest  in,  and  be  honest 
in — (in  art-parlours  and  teas  and  things) — 
would  n't  we  see  people  rushing  to  them?  I 
would  give  the  world  sometimes  to  believe  that 
it  would  pay  to  be  as  honest  with  some  people 
as  with  a  piece  of  paper  or  with  a  book. 

I  dare  say  I  am  all  wrong  in  striking  out  and 
flourishing  about  in  a  chapter  like  this,  and  in 
threatening  to  have  more  like  them,  but  there 
is  one  comfort  I  lay  to  my  soul  in  doing  it.  If 
there  is  one  thing  rather  than  another  a  book 
is  for  (one's  own  book)  it  is,  that  it  furnishes 


parentbesfs 


the  one  good,  fair,  safe  place  for  a  man  to  talk 
about  himself  in,  because  it  is  the  only  place 
that  any  one — absolutely  any  one, — at  any  mo- 
ment, can  shut  him  up. 

This  is  not  saying  that  I  am  going  to  do  it. 
My  courage  will  go  from  me  (for  saying  I,  I 
mean).  Or  I  shall  not  be  humble  enough  or 
something  and  it  all  will  pass  away.  I  am 
going  to  do  it  now,  a  little,  but  I  cannot  guar- 
antee it.  All  of  a  sudden,  no  telling  when  or 
why,  I  shall  feel  that  Mysterious  Person  with 
all  his  worldly  trappings  hanging  around  me 
again  and  before  I  know  it,  before  you  know 
it,  Gentle  Reader,  I  with  all  my  I  (or  i)  shall 
be  swallowed  up.  Next  time  I  appear,  you 
shall  see  me,  decorous,  trim,  and  in  the  third 
person,  my  literary  white  tie  on,  snooping 
along  through  these  sentences  one  after  the 
other,  crossing  my  I's  out,  wishing  I  had  never 
been  born. 

Postscript.  I  cannot  help  recording  at  this 
point,  for  the  benefit  of  reckless  persons,  how 
saying  I  in  a  book  feels.  It  feels  a  good  deal 
like  a  very  small  boy  in  a  very  high  swing 
—  a  kind  of  flashing-of-everything  through- 
nothing  feeling,  but  it  cannot  be  undone  now, 
and  so  if  you  please,  Gentle  Reader,  and  if 
everybody  will  hold  their  breath,  I  am  going 
to  hold  on  tight  and  do  it. 


paren* 
tbeeis 
totbe 

Gentle 
IRca&er 


28 


%ost  Brt  of  TReaoino 


/Bore  pas 
rentbesia— 
JBut  Acre 

to  the 
point 


VII 

flDore  parentbe0i9— But  fIDore  to 
tbe  point 

I  have  gotten  into  a  way  lately,  while  I  am 
just  living  along,  of  going  out  and  taking  a 
good  square  turn  every  now  and  then,  in  front 
of  myself.  It  is  not  altogether  an  agreeable 
experience,  but  there  seems  to  be  a  window  in 
every  man's  nature  on  purpose  for  it — arranged 
and  located  on  purpose  for  it,  and  I  find  on  the 
whole  that  going  out  around  one's  window, 
once  in  so  often,  and  standing  awhile  has 
advantages.  The  general  idea  is  to  stand 
perfectly  still  for  a  little  time,  in  a  kind  of 
general,  public,  disinterested  way,  and  then 
suddenly,  when  one  is  off  one's  guard  and  not 
looking,  so  to  speak,  take  a  peek  backwards 
into  one's  self. 

I  am  aware  that  it  does  not  follow,  because  I 
have  just  come  out  and  have  been  looking  into 
my  window,  that  I  have  a  right  to  hold  up  any 
person  or  persons  who  may  be  going  by  in 
this  book,  and  ask  them  to  look  in  too,  but  at 
the  same  time  I  cannot  conceal — do  not  wish 
to  conceal,  even  if  I  could — that  there  have 
been  times,  standing  in  front  of  my  window 
and  looking  in,  when  what  I  have  seen  there 
has  seemed  to  me  to  assume  a  national  signifi- 
cance. 

There  are  millions  of  other  windows  like  it. 


/iDore  iparentbesis 


It  is  one  of  the  daily  sorrows  of  my  life  that  the 
people  who  own  them  do  not  seem  to  know  it 
— most  of  them — except  perhaps  in  a  vague, 
hurried  pained  way.  Sometimes  I  feel  like 
calling  out  to  them  as  I  stand  by  my  window — 
see  them  go  hurrying  by  on  The  Great  Street : 
"Say  there,  Stranger!  Halloa,  Stranger! 
Want  to  see  yourself?  Come  right  over  here 
and  look  at  me ! ' ' 

Nobody  believes  it,  of  course.  It  's  a  good 
deal  like  standing  and  waving  one's  arms  in 
the  Midway — being  an  egotist, — but  I  must  say, 
I  have  never  got  a  man  yet — got  him  in  out  of 
the  rush,  I  mean,  right  up  in  front  of  my  win- 
dow— got  him  once  stooped  down  and  really 
looking  in  there,  but  he  admitted  there  was 
something  in  it. 

Thus  does  it  come  to  pass — this  gentle  swell- 
ing. Let  me  be  a  warning  to  you,  Gentle 
Reader,  when  you  once  get  to  philosophising 
yourself  over  (along  the  line  of  your  faults) 
into  the  disputed  territory  of  the  First  Person 
Singular.  I  am  not  asking  you  to  try  to  be- 
lieve my  little  philosophy  of  types.  I  am  try- 
ing to,  in  my  humble  way,  to  be  sure,  but  I 
would  rather,  on  the  whole,  let  it  go.  It  is 
not  so  much  my  philosophy  I  rest  my  case 
on,  as  my  sub-philosophy  or  religion — viz.,  I 
like  it  and  believe  in  it — saying  I.  (Thank 
Heaven  that,  bad  as  it  is,  I  have  struck  bottom 
at  last !)  The  best  I  can  do  under  the  circum- 
stances, I  suppose,  is  to  beg  (in  a  perfectly 


/more  pa» 

rentbeate 

ffiut  /Core 

totbc 

point 


3° 


%ost  Hrt  of  IReaoina 


rentbests— 

JBut  Acre 

totbe 

point 


blank  way)  forgiveness — forgiveness  of  any  and 
every  kind  from  everybody,  if  in  this  and  the 
following  chapters  I  fall  sometimes  to  talking 
of  people — people  at  large — under  the  general 
head  of  myself. 

I  was  born  to  read.  I  spent  all  my  early 
years,  as  I  remember  them,  with  books, — peer- 
ing softly  about  in  them.  My  whole  being 
was  hushed  and  trustful  and  expectant  at  the 
sight  of  a  printed  page.  I  lived  in  the  presence 
of  books,  with  all  my  thoughts  lying  open 
about  me;  a  kind  of  still,  radiant  mood  of  wel- 
come seemed  to  lie  upon  them.  When  I 
looked  at  a  shelf  of  books  I  felt  the  whole 
world  flocking  to  me. 

I  have  been  civilised  now,  I  should  say, 
twenty,  or  possibly  twenty-five,  years.  At 
least  every  one  supposes  I  am  civilised,  and 
my  whole  being  has  changed.  I  cannot  so 
much  as  look  upon  a  great  many  books  in  a 
library  or  any  other  heaped-up  place,  without 
feeling  bleak  and  heartless.  I  never  read  if  I 
can  help  it.  My  whole  attitude  toward  current 
literature  is  grouty  and  snappish,  a  kind  of 
perpetual  interrupted  "  What  are  you  ringing 
my  door-bell  now  f or  ?  "  attitude.  I  am  a 
disagreeable  character.  I  spend  at  least  one 
half  my  time,  I  should  judge,  keeping  things 
off,  in  defending  my  character.  Then  I  spend 
the  other  half  in  wondering  if,  after  all,  it  was 
worth  it.  What  I  see  in  my  window  has 


jparentbesis 


changed.  When  I  used  to  go  out  around  and 
look  into  it,  in  the  old  days,  to  see  what  I  was 
like,  I  was  a  sunny,  open  valley — streams  and 
roads  and  everything  running  down  into  it, 
and  opening  out  of  it,  and  when  I  go  out  sud- 
denly now,  and  turn  around  in  front  of  myself 
and  look  in — I  am  a  mountain  pass.  I  sift 
my  friends — up  a  trail.  The  few  friends  that 
come,  come  a  little  out  of  breath  (God  bless 
them !),  and  a  book  cannot  so  much  as  get  to 
me  except  on  a  mule's  back. 

It  is  by  no  means  an  ideal  arrangement — a 
mountain  pass,  but  it  is  better  than  always 
sitting  in  one's  study  in  civilisation,  where 
every  passer-by,  pamphlet,  boy  in  the  street, 
thinks  he  might  just  as  well  come  up  and  ring 
one's  door-bell  awhile.  All  modern  books  are 
book  agents  at  heart,  around  getting  subscrip- 
tions for  themselves.  If  a  man  wants  to  be 
sociable  or  literary  nowadays,  he  can  only  do 
it  by  being  a  more  or  less  disagreeable  char- 
acter, and  if  he  wishes  to  be  a  beautiful  charac- 
ter, he  must  go  off  and  do  it  by  himself. 

This  is  a  mere  choice  in  suicides. 

The  question  that  presses  upon  me  is:  Whose 
fault  is  it  that  a  poor  wistful,  incomplete,  hu- 
man being,  born  into  this  huge  dilemma  of  a 
world,  can  only  keep  on  having  a  soul  in  it,  by 
keeping  it  (that  is,  his  soul)  tossed  back  and 
forth — now  in  one  place  where  souls  are  lost, 
and  now  in  another  ?  Is  it  your  fault,  or  mine, 
Gentle  Reader,  that  we  are  obliged  to  live  in 


/Bore  t>9* 
rentbeate— 
Cut  flDorc 

tot  be 
point 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


Acre  pa* 
rentbcais— 

36ut  /Core 
tot  be 
point 


this  undignified,  obstreperous  fashion  in  what  is 
called  civilisation  ?  I  cannot  believe  it.  Nearly 
all  the  best  people  one  knows  can  be  seen  sitting 
in  civilisation  on  the  edge  of  their  chairs,  or 
hurrying  along  with  their  souls  in  satchels. 

There  is  but  one  conclusion.  Civilisation  is 
not  what  it  is  advertised  to  be.  Every  time  I 
see  a  fresh  missionary  down  at  the  steamer 
wharf,  as  I  do  sometimes,  starting  away  for 
other  lands,  loaded  up  with  our  Institutions  to 
the  eyes,  Church  in  one  hand  and  Schoolhouse 
in  the  other,  trim,  happy,  and  smiling  over 
them,  at  everybody,  I  feel  like  stepping  up  to 
him  and  saying,  what  seem  to  me,  a  few  ap- 
propriate words.  I  seldom  do  it,  but  the  other 
day  when  I  happened  to  be  down  at  the  Umbria 
dock  about  sailing-time,  I  came  across  one  (a 
foreign  missionary,  I  mean)  pleasant,  thought- 
less, and  benevolent-looking,  standing  there  all 
by  himself  by  the  steamer-rail,  and  I  thought 
I  would  try  speaking  to  him. 

"  Where  are  you  going  to  be  putting — 
those  ?  "  I  said,  pointing  to  a  lot  of  funny  little 
churches  and  funny  little  schoolhouses  he  was 
holding  in  both  hands. 

"  From  Greenland's  icy  mountains  to  India's 
coral  strand,"  he  said. 

I  looked  at  them  a  minute.  "You  don't 
think,  do  you?"  I  said — "  You  don't  really 
think  you  had  better  wait  over  a  little  —  bring 
them  back  and  let  us — finish  them  for  you,  do 
you  ?  one  or  two — samples  ?  "  I  said. 


parentbesis 


33 


He  looked  at  me  with  what  seemed  to  me  at 
first,  a  kind  of  blurred,  helpless  look.  I  soon 
saw  that  he  was  pitying  me  and  I  promptly 
stepped  down  to  the  dining-saloon  and  tried  to 
appreciate  two  or  three  tons  of  flowers. 

I  do  not  wish  to  say  a  word  against  mission- 
aries. They  are  merely  apt  to  be  somewhat 
heedless,  morally-hurried  persons,  rushing 
about  the  world  turning  people  (as  they  think) 
right  side  up  everywhere,  without  really  noti- 
cing them  much,  but  I  do  think  that  a  great 
deliberate  corporate  body  like  The  American 
Board  of  Commissioners  of  Foreign  Missions 
ought  to  be  more  optimistic  about  the  Church 
— wait  and  work  for  it  a  little  more,  expect  a 
little  more  of  it. 

*  It  seems  to  me  that  it  ought  to  be  far  less 
pessimistic  than  it  is,  also,  about  what  we  can 
do  in  the  way  of  schools  and  social  life  in 
civilisation  and  about  civilisation's  way  of 
doing  business.  Is  our  little  knack  of  Christi- 
anity (I  find  myself  wondering)  quite  worthy 
of  all  this  attention  it  is  getting  from  The 
American  Board  of  Commissioners  of  Foreign 
Missions  ?  Why  should  it  approve  of  civilisa- 
tion with  a  rush  ?  Does  any  one  really  suppose 
that  it  is  really  time  to  pat  it  on  the  back — yet  ? 
— to  spend  a  million  dollars  a  year — patting  it 
on  the  back  ? 

I  merely  throw  out  the  question. 


/fcore  pa= 
rentbe«i»— 
£ut  Acre 

tot  be 

point 


34 


Xost  Hrt  of 


fflorc 

TLttcrarv 
tRueb 


VIII 

flDore  Xiterarp  IRusb 

We  had  been  talking  along,  in  our  Club,  as 
usual,  for  some  time,  on  the  general  subject  of 
the  world — fixing  the  blame  for  things.  We 
had  come  to  the  point  where  it  was  nearly  all 
fixed  (most  of  it  on  other  people)  when  I 
thought  I  might  as  well  put  forward  my  little 
theory  that  nearly  everything  that  was  the 
matter,  could  be  traced  to  the  people  who 
"  belong  to  Society." 

Then  The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  (who  is  always 
shoving  a  dictionary  around  in  front  of  him 
when  he  talks)  spoke  up  and  said : 

' '  But  who  belongs  to  Society  ?  ' ' 

"  All  persons  who  read  what  they  are  told  to 
and  who  call  where  they  can't  help  it.  What 
this  world  needs  just  now,"  I  went  on,  looking 
The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  as  much  in  the  eye  as  I 
could,  "is  emancipation.  It  needs  a  prophet 
— a  man  who  can  gather  about  him  a  few 
brave-hearted,  intelligently  ignorant  men,  who 
shall  go  about  with  their  beautiful  feet  on  the 
mountains,  telling  the  good  tidings  of  how 
many  things  there  are  we  do  not  need  to  know. 
The  prejudice  against  being  ignorant  is  largely 
because  people  have  not  learned  how  to  do  it. 
The  wrong  people  have  taken  hold  of  it." 

I  cannot  remember  the  exact  words  of  what 
was  said  after  this,  but  I  said  that  it  seemed  to  me 


flDore  SLtterarg  IRusb 


35 


that  most  people  were  afraid  not  to  know  every- 
thing. Not  knowing  too  much  is  a  natural 
gift,  and  unless  a  man  can  make  his  ignorance 
contagious — inspire  people  with  the  books  he 
dares  not  read — of  course  the  only  thing  he 
can  do  is  to  give  up  and  read  everything,  and 
belong  to  Society.  He  certainly  cannot  belong 
to  himself  unless  he  protects  himself  with  well- 
selected,  carefully  guarded,  daring  ignorance. 
Think  of  the  books — the  books  that  are  dic- 
tated to  us — the  books  that  will  not  let  a  man 
go, — and  behind  every  book  a  hundred  intelli- 
gent men  and  women — one's  friends,  too — 
one's  own  kin 

P.  G.  S.  of  M.:  "But  the  cultured  man 
must " 

The  cultured  man  is  the  man  who  can  tell 
me  what  he  does  not  know,  with  such  grace 
that  I  feel  ashamed  of  knowing  it. 

Now  there  's  M ,  for  example.  Other 

people  seem  to  read  to  talk,  but  I  never  see 
him  across  a  drawing-room  without  an  impulse 
of  barbarism,  and  I  always  get  him  off  into  a 
corner  as  soon  as  I  can,  if  only  to  rest  myself — 
to  feel  that  I  have  a  right  not  to  read  every- 
thing. He  always  proves  to  me  something 
that  I  can  get  along  without.  He  is  full  of  the 
most  choice  and  picturesque  bits  of  ignorance. 
He  is  creatively  ignorant.  He  displaces  a 
book  every  time  I  see  him — which  is  a  deal 
better  in  these  days  than  writing  one.  A 
man  should  be  measured  by  his  book-displace- 


dDore 
literary 

IRusb 


%ost  Hrt  of 


/Bore 

litcrarv: 
•Kuab 


ment.  He  goes  about  with  his  thinking  face, 
and  a  kind  of  nimbus  over  him,  of  never  need- 
ing to  read  at  all.  He  has  nothing  whatever 
to  give  but  himself,  but  I  had  rather  have  one 
of  his  questions  about  a  book  I  had  read,  than 
all  the  other  opinions  and  subtle  distinctions 
in  the  room — or  the  book  itself. 

P.  G.  S.  of  M.  "  But  the  cultured  man 
must ' ' 

NOT.  It  is  the  very  essence  of  a  cultured 
man  that  when  he  hears  the  word  "  must"  it 
is  on  his  own  lips.  It  is  the  very  essence  of 
his  culture  that  he  says  it  to  himself.  His 
culture  is  his  belonging  to  himself,  and  his  be- 
longing to  himself  is  the  first  condition  of  his 
being  worth  giving  to  other  people.  One  longs 
for  Elia.  People  know  too  much,  and  there 
does  n't  seem  to  be  a  man  living  who  can 
charm  them  from  the  error  of  their  way. 
Knowledge  takes  the  place  of  everything  else, 
and  all  one  can  do  in  this  present  day  as  he 
reads  the  reviews  and  goes  to  his  club,  is  to 
look  forward  with  a  tired  heart  to  the  prophecy 
of  Scripture,  "  Knowledge  shall  pass  away." 

Where  do  we  see  the  old  and  sweet  content 
of  loving  a  thing  for  itself?  Now,  there  are 
the  flowers.  The  only  way  to  delight  in  a 
flower  at  your  feet  in  these  days  is  to  watch 
with  it  all  alone,  or  keep  still  about  it.  The 
moment  you  speak  of  it,  it  becomes  botany. 
It  's  a  rare  man  who  will  not  tell  you  all  he 
knows  about  it.  Love  is  n't  worth  anything 


/iDore  SLfterars  TRusb 


37 


without  a  classic  name.  It  's  a  wonder  we 
have  any  flowers  left.  Half  the  charm  of  a 
flower  to  me  is  that  it  looks  demure  and  talks 
perfume  and  keeps  its  name  so  gently  to  itself. 
The  man  who  always  enjoys  views  by  pick- 
ing out  the  places  he  knows,  is  a  symbol  of  all 
our  reading  habits  and  of  our  national  relation 
to  books.  One  can  glory  in  a  great  cliff  down 
in  the  depths  of  his  heart,  but  if  you  mention 
it,  it  is  geology,  and  an  argument.  Even  the 
birds  sing  zoologically,  and  as  for  the  sky,  it 
has  become  a  mere  blue-and-gold  science,  and 
all  the  wonder  seems  to  be  confined  to  one's 
not  knowing  the  names  of  the  planets.  I  was 
brought  up  wistfully  on 

Twinkle,  twinkle,  little  star, 
How  I  wonder  what  you  are. 

But  now  it  is  become: 

f   Twinkle,  twinkle,  little  star, 
Teacher's  told  me  what  you  are. 

Even  babies  won't  wonder  very  soon.  That 
is  to  say,  they  won't  wonder  out  loud.  No- 
body does.  Another  of  my  poems  was: 

Where  did  you  come  from,  baby  dear  ? 
Out  of  the  everywhere  into  here. 

I  thought  of  it  the  other  day  when  I  stepped 
into  the  library  with  the  list  of  books  I  had  to 
have  an  opinion  about  before  Mrs.  W 's 


/Core 

literal? 

•Ruflb 


%ost  Hct  of  IReaofns 


/Core 

literary 

tftusb 


Thursday  Afternoon, 
infant. 


I   felt  like  a  literary 


Where  did  you  come  from,  baby  fair? 
Out  of  the  here  into  everywhere. 

And  the  bookcases  stared  at  me. 

It  is  a  serious  question  whether  the  average 
American  youth  is  ever  given  a  chance  to  thirst 
for  knowledge.  He  thirsts  for  ignorance  in- 
stead. From  the  very  first  he  is  hemmed  in 
by  knowledge.  The  kindergarten  with  its 
suave  relentlessness,  its  perfunctory  cheerful- 
ness, closes  in  upon  the  life  of  every  child  with 
himself.  The  dear  old-fashioned  breathing 
spell  he  used  to  have  after  getting  here — 
whither  has  it  gone  ?  The  rough,  strong,  ruth- 
less, unseemly,  grown-up  world  crowds  to  the 
very  edge  of  every  beginning  life.  It  has  no 
patience  with  trailing  clouds  of  glory.  Flocks 
of  infants  every  year — new-comers  to  this  planet 
— who  can  but  watch  them  sadly,  huddled 
closer  and  closer  to  the  little  strip  of  wonder 
that  is  left  near  the  land  from  which  they 
came?  No  lingering  away  from  us.  No  in- 
finite holiday.  Childhood  walks  a  precipice 
crowded  to  the  brink  of  birth.  We  tabulate  its 
moods.  We  register  its  learning  inch  by  inch. 
We  draw  its  poor  little  premature  soul  out  of 
its  body  breath  by  breath.  Infants  are  well 
informed  now.  The  suckling  has  nerves.  A 
few  days  more  he  will  be  like  all  the  rest  of 
us.  It  will  be: 


Xiterarg  IRusb 


39 


/  Poem:  "  When  I  Was  Weaned." 

"  My  First  Tooth:  A  Study." 

The  Presiding  Genius  of  the  State  of  Massa- 
chusetts, with  his  dazed,  kind  look,  looked  up 
and  said:  "  I  fear,  my  dear  fellow,  there  is  no 
place  for  you  in  the  world." 

Thanks.  One  of  the  delights  of  going  fish- 
ing or  hunting  is,  that  one  learns  how  small 
"a  place  in  the  world"  is— comes  across  so 
many  accidentally  preserved  characters — pre- 
served by  not  having  a  place  in  the  world — 
persons  that  are  interesting  to  be  with — persons 
you  can  tell  things. 

The  real  object — it  seems  to  me — in  meeting 
another  human  being  is  complement — fitting 
into  each  other's  ignorances.  Sometimes  it 
seems  as  if  it  were  only  where  there  is  some- 
thing to  be  caught  or  shot,  or  where  there  is 
plenty  of  room,  that  the  highest  and  most 
sociable  and  useful  forms  of  ignorance  were 
allowed  to  mature. 

One  can  still  find  such  fascinating  prejudices, 
such  frank  enthusiasms  of  ignorance,  where 
there  's  good  fishing;  and  then,  in  the  stray 
hamlets,  there  is  the  grave  whimsicalness  and 
the  calm  superior  air  of  austerity  to  cultured 
people. 

Ah,  let  me  live  in  the  Maine  woods  or  wan- 
der by  the  brooks  of  Virginia,  and  rest  my 
soul  in  the  delights — in  the  pomposity — of 
ignorance — ignorance  in  its  pride  and  glory 
and  courage  and  lovableness!  I  never  come 


flDore 

literary 
1Ru0b 


Xost  Hrt  of  TReaoina 


Acre 

literary 
Tvusb 


back  from  a  vacation  without  a  dream  of  what 
I  might  have  been,  if  I  had  only  dared  to  know 
a  little  less;  and  even  now  I  sometimes  feel  I 
have  ignorance  enough,  if  like  Elia,  for  in- 
stance, I  only  knew  how  to  use  it,  but  I  cannot 
as  much  as  get  over  being  ashamed  of  it.  I 
am  nearly  gone.  I  have  little  left  but  the  gift 
of  being  bored.  That  is  something  —  but 
hardly  a  day  passes  without  my  slurring  over 
a  guilty  place  in  conversation,  without  my 
hiding  my  ignorance  under  a  bushel,  where  I 
can  go  later  and  take  a  look  at  it  by  myself. 
Then  I  know  all  about  it  next  time  and  sink 
lower  and  lower.  A  man  can  do  nothing 
alone.  Of  course,  ignorance  must  be  natural 
and  not  acquired  in  order  to  have  the  true  ring 
and  afford  the  most  relief  in  the  world;  but 
every  wide-awake  village  that  has  thoughtful 
people  enough — people  who  are  educated  up  to 
it — ought  to  organise  an  Ignoramus  Club  to 

defend  the  town  from  papers  and  books . 

It  was  at  about  this  point  that  The  Presiding 
Genius  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts  took 
up  the  subject,  and  after  modulating  a  little 
and  then  modulating  a  little  more,  he  was  soon 
listening  to  himself  about  a  book  we  had  not 
read,  and  I  sat  in  my  chair  and  wrote  out  this. 


Ube  Bugbear  ot  Being  Well  Unformed 


IX 

Gbe  Bugbear  of  Being  Well  fln* 
formefe— H  practical  Suggestion 

i.  This  Club  shall  be  known  as  the  Igno- 
ramus Club  of  -i- — . 

4.  Every  member  shall  be  pledged  not  to 
read  the  latest  book  until  people  have  stopped 
expecting  it. 

5.  The  Club  shall  have  a  Standing  Commit- 
tee that  shall  report  at  every  meeting  on  New 
Things  That  People  Do  Not  Need  to  Know. 

6.  It  shall  have  a  Public  Library  Committee, 
appointed  every  year,  to  look  over  the  books 
in  regular  order  and  report  on  Old  Things  That 
People  Do  Not  Need  to  Know.     (Committee 
instructed  to  keep  the  library  as  small  as  pos- 
sible.) 

8.  No  member  (vacations  excepted)  shall 
read  any  book  that  he  would  not  read  twice. 
In  case  he  does,  he  shall  be  obliged  to  read  it 
twice  or  pay  a  fine  (three  times  the  price  of 
book,  net). 

11.  The  Club  shall  meet  weekly. 

12.  Any  person   of  suitable  age  shall  be 
eligible  for  membership  in  the  Club,  who,  after 
a  written  examination  in  his  deficiencies,  shall 
appear,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Examining  Board, 
to  have  selected  his  ignorance  thoughtfully, 
conscientiously,  and  for  the  protection  of  his 
mind. 


Ube 
Cugbearof 

S3cing 
TBHell  In* 
formes— H 
practical 
Suggestion 


%ost  Brt  of  IReafcing 


Ube 
£ugbear  of 

JGeing 


fortneli— H 
practical 

Suggestion 


13.  All  persons  thus  approved  shall  be  voted 
upon  at  the  next  regular  meeting  of  the  Club 
— the  vote  to  be  taken  by  ballot  (any  candidate 
who  has  not  read  When  KnighiJiood  Was  in 
Flower,  or  Audrey,  or  David  Harum — by  ac- 
clamation). , 

^ —       — "  •  ^-r>   0>  -}r^Y 


Perhaps  I  have  quoted  from  the  by-laws 
sufficiently  to  give  an  idea  of  the  spirit  and 
aim  of  the  Club.  I  append  the  order  of  meet- 
ing: 

1.  Called  to  order. 

2.  Reports  of  Committees. 

3.  General  Confession  (what  members  have 
read  during  the  week). 

4.  FINES. 

5.  Review:  Books  I  Have  Escaped. 

6.  Essay:  Things  Plato  Did  Not  Need  to 
Know. 

7.  Omniscience.  Helpful  Hints.     Remedies. 

8.  The   Description    Evil;   followed  by  an 
illustration. 

9.  Not  Travelling  on  the  Nile :  By  One  Who 
Has  Been  There. 

10.  Our  Village  Street :  Stereopticon. 

11.  What  Not  to  Know  about  Birds. 

12.  Myself  through  an  Opera-Glass. 

13.  Sonnet:  Botany. 

14.  Essay:  Proper  Treatment  of  Paupers, 
Insane,  and  Instructive  People. 

15.  The  Fad  for  Facts. 

1 6.  How  to  Organise  a  Club  against  Clubs. 


Ube  Bugbear  of  Being  Mell  flnformeo 


17.  Paper:  How  to  Humble  Him  Who  Asks, 
"Have  You  Read ?" 

1 8.  Essay,  by  youngest  member:   Infinity. 
An  Appreciation. 

19.  Review:  The  Heavens  in  a  Nutshell. 

20.  Review.    Wild  Animals  I  Do  Not  Want 
to  Know. 

21.  Exercise    in    Silence.      (Ten    Minutes. 
Entire  Club.) 

22.  Essay  (Ten  Minutes) :  Encyclopedia  Bri- 
tannica,  Summary. 

23.  Exercise  in   Wondering    about  Some- 
thing.   (Selected.  Ten  Minutes.   Entire  Club.) 

24.  Debate:    Which   Is   More  Deadly — the 
Pen  or  the  Sword  ? 

25.  Things  Said  To-Night  That  We  Must 
Forget. 

26.  ADJOURNMENT.        (Each    member    re- 
quired to  walk  home  alone  looking  at  the  stars.) 

I  have  sometimes  thought  I  would  like  to  go 
off  to  some  great,  wide,  bare,  splendid  place — 
nothing  but  Time  and  Room  in  it — and  read 
awhile.  I  would  want  it  built  in  the  same 
general  style  and  with  the  same  general  effect 
as  the  universe,  but  a  universe  in  which  every- 
thing lets  one  alone,  in  which  everything  just 
goes  quietly  on  in  its  great  still  round,  letting 
itself  be  looked  at — no  more  said  about  it, 
nothing  to  be  done  about  it.  No  exclamations 
required.  No  one  standing  around  explaining 
things  or  showing  how  they  appreciated  them. 


Ube 
Biujbeai'of 

JBefng 
lUell  Una 
formed  H 
practical 
Suggestion 


44 


Xost  art  of  IReaoina 


-Cbc 
ffiugbear  of 

Scing 
Well  1fn= 
formeb— S 
practical 
Suggestion 


Then  after  I  had  looked  about  a  little,  seen 
that  everything  was  safe  and  according  to 
specifications,  I  think  the  first  thing  I  would 
do  would  be  to  sit  down  and  see  if  I  could  not 
read  a  great  book — the  way  I  used  to  read  a 
great  book,  before  I  belonged  to  civilisation, 
read  it  until  I  felt  my  soul  growing  softly 
toward  it,  reaching  up  to  the  day  and  to  the 
night  with  it. 

I  have  always  kept  on  hoping  that  I  would 
be  allowed,  in  spite  of  being  somewhat  mixed 
up  with  civilisation,  to  be  a  normal  man  some- 
time. It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  the 
formal  man — the  highly  organised  man  in  all 
ages,  is  the  man  who  takes  the  universe  pri- 
marily as  a  spectacle.  This  is  his  main  use  for 
it.  The  object  of  his  life  is  to  get  a  good  look 
at  it  before  he  dies— to  be  the  kind  of  man  who 
can  get  a  good  look  at  it.  How  any  one  can 
go  through  a  whole  life — sixty  or  seventy  years 
of  it — with  a  splendour  like  this  arching  over 
him  morning,  noon,  and  night,  flying  beneath 
his  feet,  blooming  out  at  him  on  every  side, 
and  not  spend  nearly  all  his  time  (after  the 
bare  necessaries  of  life)  in  taking  it  in,  listen- 
ing and  tasting  and  looking  in  it,  is  one  of  the 
seven  wonders  of  the  world.  I  never  look  out 
of  my  factory  window  in  civilisation,  see  a 
sunset  or  shore  of  the  universe, — am  reminded 
again  that  there  is  a  universe— but  I  wonder 
at  myself  and  wonder  at  It£_)l  try  to  put 
civilisation  and  the  universe  together.  I  can- 


TTbe  Buabear  ot  Beina  Well  Unformefc 


45 


not  do  it.  It 's  as  if  we  were  afraid  to  be  caught 
looking  at  it — most  of  us— spending  the  time 
to  look  at  it,  or  as  if  we  were  ashamed  before 
the  universe  itself — running  furiously  to  and 
fro  in  it,  lest  it  should  look  at  us. 

It  is  the  first  trait  of  a  great  book,  it  seems 
to  me,  that  it  makes  all  other  books — little 
hurrying,  petulant  books — wait.  A  kind  of 
immeasurable  elemental  hunger  comes  to  a 
man  out  of  it.  Somehow  I  feel  I  have  not  had 
it  out  with  a  great  book  if  I  have  not  faced 
other  great  things  with  it.  I  want  to  face  storms 
with  it,  hours  of  weariness  and  miles  of  walk- 
ing with  it.  It  seems  to  ask  me  to.  It  seems 
to  bring  with  it  something  which  makes  me 
want  to  stop  my  mere  reading-and-doing  kind 
of  life,  my  ink-and-paper  imitation  kind  of  life, 
and  come  out  and  be  a  companion  with  the 
silent  shining,  with  the  eternal  going  on  of 
things.  It  seems  to  be  written  in  every 
writing  that  is  worth  a  man's  while  that  it 
can  not — that  it  shall  not — be  read  by  itself. 
It  is  written  that  a  man  shall  work  to  read,  that 
he  must  win  some  great  delight  to  do  his  read- 
ing with.  Many  and  many  a  winter  day  I 
have  tramped  with  four  lines  down  to  the  edge 
of  the  night,  to  overtake  my  soul — to  read 
four  lines  with.  I  have  faced  a  wind  for 
hours — been  bitterly  cold  with  it  —  before  the 
utmost  joy  of  the  book  I  had  lost  would  come 
back  to  me.  I  find  that  when  I  am  being 
normal  (vacations  mostly)  I  scarcely  know 


•Cbe 
Uugbear  of 

aSetng 
tClcll  Ina 
formeo— H 
practical 
Suggestion 


%ost  Hrt  ot 


Kugbear  of 
Keing 

tUdl  Ins 
formeJ>— H 

practical 
Suggestion 


what  it  is  to  give  myself  over  to  another  mind 
for  more  than  an  hour  or  so  at  a  time.  If  a 
chapter  has  anything  in  it,  I  want  to  do  some- 
thing with  it,  go  out  and  believe  it,  live  with 
it,  exercise  it  awhile.  I  am  not  only  bored 
with  a  book  when  it  does  not  interest  me.  I 
am  bored  with  it  when  it  does.  I  want  to 
interrupt  it,  take  it  outdoors,  see  what  the 
hills  and  clouds  think,  try  it  on,  test  it,  see  if 
it  is  good  enough — see  if  it  can  come  down 
upon  me  as  rain  or  sunlight  or  other  real 
things  and  blow  upon  me  as  the  wind.  It 
does  not  belong  to  me  until  it  has  found  its 
way  through  all  the  weathers  within  and  the 
weathers  without,  until  it  drifts  with  me 
through  moods,  events,  sensations,  and  days 
and  nights,  faces  and  sunsets,  and  the  light  of 
stars, — until  it  is  a  part  of  life  itself.  0  I  find 
there  is  no  other  or  shorter  or  easier  way  for 
me  to  do  with  a  great  book  than  to  greet  it  as 
it  seems  to  ask  to  be  greeted,  as  if  it  were  a 
world  that  had  come  to  me  and  sought  me  out 
— wanted  me  to  live  in  it.  Hundreds  and  hun- 
dreds of  times,  when  I  am  being  civilised, 
have  I  not  tried  to  do  otherwise  ?  Have  I  not 
stopped  my  poor  pale,  hurried,  busy  soul  (like 
a  kind  of  spectre  flying  past  me)  before  a  great 
book  and  tried  to  get  it  to  speak  to  it,  and  it 
would  not  ?  It  requires  a  world — a  great  book 
does — as  a  kind  of  ticket  of  admission,  and 
what  have  I  to  do,  when  I  am  being  civilised, 
with  a  world  —  the  one  that  's  running  still 


Tlbe  Bugbear  of  3Beina  TKnell  Unformefc 


47 


and  godlike  over  me  ?  Do  I  not  for  days  and 
weeks  at  a  time  go  about  in  it,  guilty,  shut-in, 
and  foolish  under  it,  slinking  about — its  emptied 
miracles  all  around  me,  mean,  joyless,  anxious, 
unable  to  look  the  littlest  flower  in  the  face 

— unable .    "Ah,  God!  "  my  soul  cries  out 

within  me.  Are  not  all  these  things  mine? 
Do  they  not  belong  with  me  and  I  with  them  ? 
And  I  go  racing  about,  making  things  up  in 
their  presence,  plodding  for  shadows,  cutting 
out  paper  dolls  to  live  with.  All  the  time  this 
earnest,  splendid,  wasted  heaven  shining  over 
me — doing  nothing  with  it,  expecting  nothing 
of  it — a  little  more  warmth  out  of  it  perhaps, 

a  little  more  light  not  to  see  in .    Who  am  I 

that  the  grasses  should  whisper  to  me,  that  the 
winds  should  blow  upon  me  ?  Now  and  then 
there  are  days  that  come,  when  I  see  a  flower 
— when  I  really  see  a  flower — and  my  soul  cries 
out  to  it. 

Now  and  then  there  are  days  too,  when  I 
see  a  great  book,  a  book  that  has  the  universe 
wrought  in  it.  I  find  my  soul  feeling  it  vaguely, 
creeping  toward  it.  I  wonder  if  I  dare  to  read 
it.  I  remember  how  I  used  to  read  it.  I  all 
but  pray  to  it.  I  sit  in  my  factory  window  and 
try  sometimes.  But  it  is  all  far  away — at  least 
as  long  as  I  stay  in  my  window.  It 's  all  about 
some  one  else — a  kind  of  splendid  wistful  walk- 
ing in  a  dream.  It  does  not  really  belong  to 
me  to  live  in  a  great  book — a  book  with  the 
universe  in  it.  Sometimes  it  almost  seems  to. 


Ube 
Uugbear  of 

Xcina, 
•mell  inn 
formed H 
practical 
Suggestion 


48 


Xost  Hrt  of 


cbe  IDeaS 

level  of 

Untcllis 

gence 


But  it  barely,  faintly  belongs  to  me.  It  is  as 
if  the  sky  came  to  me,  and  stooped  down  over 
me,  and  then  went  softly  away  in  my  sleep. 


Xevel  of  Intelligence 


Your  hostess  introduces  you  to  a  man  in  a 
drawing  -  room.  '  '  Mr.  C  -  belongs  to  a 
Browning  Club,  too,"  she  says. 

What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it?  Are 
you  going  to  talk  about  Browning  ? 

Not  if  Browning  is  one  of  your  alive  places. 
You  will  reconnoitre  first  —  James  Whitcomb 
Riley  or  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox.  There  is  no 
telling  where  The  Enemy  will  bring  you  up,  if 
you  do  not.  He  may  tell  you  something  about 
Browning  you  never  knew  —  something  you 
have  always  wanted  to  know,  —  but  you  will 
be  hurt  that  he  knew  it.  He  may  be  the 
original  Grammarian  of  "The  Grammarian's 
Funeral  '  '  (whom  Robert  Browning  took  —  and 
knew  perfectly  well  that  he  took  at  the  one 
poetic  moment  of  his  life),  but  his  belonging  to 
a  Browning  Club  —  The  Enemy,  that  is  —  does 
not  mean  anything  to  you  or  to  any  one  else 
nowadays  —  either  about  Browning  or  about 
hifflSelf. 

Xrhere  was  a  time  once,  when,  if  a  man 
revealed  in  conversation,  that  he  was  familiar 
with  poetic  structure  in  John  Keats,  it  meant 


Beat)  Xevel  ot  flntelliaence 


49 


something  about  the  man — his  temperament, 
his  producing  or  delighting  power.  It  means 
now,  that  he  has  taken  a  course  in  poetics  in 
college,  or  teaches  English  in  a  high  school, 
and  is  carrying  deadly  information  about  with 
him.  wherever  he  goes.  It  does  not  mean  that 
he  has  a  spark  of  the  Keats  spirit  in  him,  or 
that  he  could  have  endured  being  in  the  same 
room  with  Keats,  or  Keats  could  have  endured 
being  in  the  same  room  with  him,  for  fifteen 
minutes. 

If  there  is  one  inconvenience  rather  than 
another  in  being  born  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  it  is  the  almost  constant 
compulsion  one  is  under  in  it,  of  finding  people 
out — making  a  distinction  between  the  people 
who  know  a  beautiful  thing  and  are  worth 
while,  and  the  boors  of  culture — the  people  who 
know  all  about  it.  One  sees  on  every  hand 
to-day  persons  occupying  positions  of  im- 
portance who  have  been  taken  through  all 
the  motions  of  education,  from  the  bottom  to 
the  top,  but  who  always  belong  to  the  intel- 
lectual lower  classes  whatever  their  positions 
may  be,  because  they  are  not  masters.  They 
are  clumsy  and  futile  with  knowledge.  Their 
culture  has  not  been  made  over  into  them- 
selves. They  have  acquired  it  largely  under 
mob-influence  (the  dead  level  of  intelligence), 
and  all  that  they  can  do  with  it,  not  wanting 
it,  is  to  be  teachery  with  it — force  it  on  other 
people  who  do  not  want  it. 


Ube  H>ea& 
level  of 

Intelli- 
gence 


5° 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


Ube  S>ea6 
level  of 
fntellf. 

gence 


Whether  in  the  origin,  processes,  or  results 
of  their  learning,  these  people  have  all  the 
attributes  of  a  mob.  Their  influence  and  force 
in  civilisation  is  a  mob  influence,  and  it  operates 
in  the  old  and  classic  fashion  of  mobs  upon  all 
who  oppose  it. 

It  constitutes  at  present  the  most  important 
and  securely  intrenched  intimidating  force  that 
modern  society  presents  against  the  actual 
culture  of  the  world,  whether  in  the  schools  or 
out  of  them.  Its  voice  is  in  every  street,  and  its 
shout  of  derision  may  be  heard  in  almost  every 
walk  of  life  against  all  who  refuse  to  conform 
to  it.  There  are  but  very  few  who  refuse. 
Millions  of  human  beings,  young  and  old,  in 
meek  and  willing  rows  are  seen  on  every  side, 
standing  before  It  —  THE;  DEAD  LEVEL, — 
anxious  to  do  anything  to  be  graded  up  to  it, 
or  to  be  graded  down  to  it — offering  their  heads 
to  be  taken  off,  their  necks  to  be  stretched,  or 
their  waists — willing  to  live  footless  all  their 
days  —  anything  —  anything  whatever,  bless 
their  hearts!  to  know  that  they  are  on  the 
Level,  the  Dead  Level,  the  precise  and  exact 
Dead  Level  of  Intelligence. 

The  fact  that  this  mob-power  keeps  its  hold 
by  using  books  instead  of  bricks  is  merely  a 
matter  of  form.  It  occupies  most  of  the 
strategic  positions  just  now  in  the  highways 
of  learning,  and  it  does  all  the  things  that 
mobs  do,  and  does  them  in  the  way  that  mobs 
do  them.  It  has  broken  into  the  gardens,  into 


Beat)  Xevel  of  flntelltcjence 


51 


the  arts,  the  resting-places  of  nations,  and  with 
its  factories  to  learn  to  love  in,  its  treadmills 
to  learn  to  sing  in,  it  girdles  its  belt  of  drudgery 
around  the  world  and  carries  bricks  and  mortar 
to  the  clouds.  It  shouts  to  every  human  being 
across  the  spaces — the  outdoors  of  life :  ' '  Who 
goes  there?  Come  thou  with  us.  Dig  thou 
with  us.  Root  or  die!  "V 

Bvery  vagrant  joy-maker  and  world-builder 
the  modern  era  boasts — genius,  lover,  singer, 
artist,  has  had  to  have  his  struggle  with  the 
hod-carriers  of  culture,  and  if  a  lover  of  books 
has  not  enough  love  in  him  to  refuse  to  be 
coerced  into  joining  the  huge  Intimidator,  the 
aggregation  of  the  Reading  Labour  Unions 
of  the  world,  which  rules  the  world,  there  is 
little  hope  for  him.  All  true  books  draw 
quietly  away  from  him.  Their  spirit  is  a 
spirit  he  cannot  know. 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  more  significant 
fact  with  regard  to  the  ruling  culture  of 
modern  life  than  the  almost  total  displacement 
of  temperament  in  it, — its  blank,  staring  iu- 
expressiveness.  We  have  lived  our  lives  so 
long  under  the  domination  of  the  "  Cultured- 
man-must ' '  theory  of  education — the  industry 
of  being  well  informed  has  gained  such  head- 
way with  us,  that  out  of  all  of  the  crowds  of 
the  civilised  we  prefer  to  live  with  to-day,  one 
must  go  very  far  to  find  a  cultivated  man  who 
has  not  violated  himself  in  his  knowledge,  who 
has  not  given  up  his  last  chance  at  distinction 


tCbe  2>ea& 

level  of 

Intents 

gence 


Olost  Hrt  of 


tlbe  EVnS 
level  of 
Intents 

gcnce 


—his  last  chance  to  have  his  knowledge  fit  him 
closely  and  express  him  and  belong  to  him. 

The  time  was,  when  knowledge  was  made  to 
fit  people  like  their  clothes.  But  now  that  we 
have  come  to  the  point  where  we  pride  our- 
selves on  educating  people  in  rows  and  civil- 
ising them  in  the  bulk,  "  If  a  man  has  the 
privilege  of  being  born  by  himself,  of  begin- 
ning his  life  by  himself,  it  is  as  much  as  he 
can  expect,"  says  the  typical  Board  of  Edu- 
cation. The  result  is,  so  far  as  his  being 
educated  is  concerned,  the  average  man  looks 
back  to  his  first  birthday  as  his  last  chance  of 
being  treated  as  God  made  him,  —  a  special 
creation  by  himself.  "  The  Almighty  may 
deal  with  a  man,  when  He  makes  him,  as  a 
special  creation  by  himself.  He  may  manage 
to  do  it  afterward.  We  cannot,"  says  The 
Board,  succinctly,  drawing  its  salary;  "  It  in- 
creases the  tax  rate." 

The  problem  is  dealt  with  simply  enough. 
There  is  just  so  much  cloth  to  be  had  and  just 
so  many  young  and  two-legged  persons  to  be 
covered  with  it — and  that  is  the  end  of  it. 
The  growing  child  walks  down  the  years — 
turns  every  corner  of  life  —  with  Vistas  of 
Ready-Made  Clothing  hanging  before  him, 
closing  behind  him.  Unless  he  shall  fit  him- 
self to  these  clothes — he  is  given  to  understand 
— down  the  pitying,  staring  world  he  shall 
go,  naked,  all  his  days,  like  a  dream  in  the 
night. 


2>ea&  Xevel  ot  Untelliaence 


53 


It  is  a  general  principle  that  a  nation's  life 
can  be  said  to  be  truly  a  civilised  life,  in  pro- 
portion as  it  is  expressive,  and  in  proportion 
as  all  the  persons  in  it,  in  the  things  they 
know  and  in  the  things  they  do,  are  engaged 
in  expressing  what  they  are. 

A  generation  may  be  said  to  stand  forth  in 
history,  to  be  a  great  and  memorable  genera- 
tion in  art  and  letters,  in  material  and  spiritual 
creation,  in  proportion  as  the  knowledge  of 
that  generation  was  fitted  to  the  people  who 
wore  it  and  the  things  they  were  doing  in  it, 
and  the  things  they  were  born  to  do. 

If  it  were  not  contradicted  by  almost  every 
attribute  of  what  is  being  called  an  age  of 
special  and  general  culture,  it  would  seem  to 
be  the  first  axiom  of  all  culture  that  know- 
ledge can  only  be  made  to  be  true  knowledge, 
by  being  made  to  fit  people,  and  to  express 
them  as  their  clothes  fit  them  and  express 
them. 

But  we  do  not  want  knowledge  in  our  civili- 
sation to  fit  people  as  their  clothes  fit  them. 
We  do  not  even  want  their  clothes  to  fit  them. 
The  people  themselves  do  not  want  it.  Our 
modern  life  is  an  elaborate  and  organised  en- 
deavour, on  the  part  of  almost  every  person  in 
it,  to  escape  from  being  fitted,  either  in  know- 
ledge or  in  anything  else.  The  first  symptom 
of  civilisation — of  the  fact  that  a  man  is  be- 
coming civilised — is  that  he  wishes  to  appear 
to  belong  where  he  does  not.  It  is  looked 


"C  be  Deat> 
level  of 

1lntcIU= 
gence 


54 


%ost  Hrt  of 


Ube  OcaS 
level  of 

11ntcUf= 
gcnce 


upon  as  the  spirit  of  the  age.  He  wishes  to  be 
learned,  that  no  one  may  find  out  how  little 
he  knows.  He  wishes  to  be  religious,  that  no 
one  may  see  how  wicked  he  is.  He  wishes  to 
be  respectable,  that  no  one  may  know  that  he 
does  not  respect  himself.  The  result  mocks 
at  us  from  every  corner  in  life.  Society  is  a 
struggle  to  get  into  the  wrong  clothes.  Cul- 
ture is  a  struggle  to  learn  the  things  that  be- 
long to  some  one  else.  Black  Mollie  (who  is 
the  cook  next  door)  presented  her  betrothed 
last  week — a  stable  hand  on  the  farm — with  an 
eight-dollar  manicure  set.  She  did  not  mean 
to  sum  up  the  condition  of  culture  in  the 
United  States  in  this  simple  and  tender  act. 
But  she  did. 

Michael  O'Hennessy,  who  lives  under  the 
hill,  sums  it  up  also.  He  has  just  bought  a 
brougham  in  which  he  and  Mrs.  O'H.  can  be 
seen  almost  any  pleasant  Sunday  driving  in 
the  Park.  It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  Michael 
O'Hennessy,  sitting  in  his  brougham,  is  a 
genuinely  happy- looking  object.  But  it  is  not 
the  brougham  itself  that  Michael  enjoys. 
What  he  enjoys  is  the  fact  that  he  has  bought 
the  brougham,  and  that  the  brougham  belongs 
to  some  one  else.  Mrs.  John  Brown-Smith, 
who  presides  at  our  tubs  from  week  to  week, 
and  who  comes  to  us  in  a  brilliant  silk  waist 
(removed  for  business),  has  just  bought  a 
piano  to  play  Hold  the  Fort  on,  with  one  finger, 
when  the  neighbours  are  passing  by — a  fact 


TIbe  2)eat>  Xevel  of  flntellioence 


55 


which  is  not  without  national  significance, 
which  sheds  light  upon  schools  and  upon 
college  catalogues  and  learning-shows,  and 
upon  educational  conditions  through  the  whole 
United  States. 

It  would  be  a  great  pity  if  a  man  could  not 
know  the  things  that  have  always  belonged 
before,  to  other  men  to  know,  and  it  is  the 
essence  of  culture  that  he  should,  but  his  ap- 
pearing to  know  things  that  belong  to  some  one 
else — his  desire  to  appear  to  know  them — 
heaps  up  darkness.  The  more  things  there 
are  a  man  knows  without  knowing  the  inside 
of  them — the  spirit  of  them — the  more  kinds 
of  an  ignoramus  he  is.  It  is  not  enough  to  say 
that  the  learned  man  (learned  in  this  way)  is 
merely  ignorant.  His  ignorance  is  placed 
where  it  counts  the  most, — generally, — at  the 
fountain  heads  of  society,  and  he  radiates 
ignorance. 

There  seem  to  be  three  objections  to  the 
Dead  Level  of  Intelligence, — getting  people  at 
all  hazards,  alive  or  dead,  to  know  certain 
things.  First,  the  things  that  a  person  who 
learns  in  this  way  appears  to  know,  are  blighted 
by  his  appearing  to  know  them.  Second,  he 
keeps  other  people  who  might  know  them  from 
wanting  to.  Third,  he  poisons  his  own  life, 
by  appearing  to  know — by  even  desiring  to 
appear  to  know — what  is  not  in  him  to  know. 
He  takes  away  the  last  hope  he  can  ever  have 
of  really  knowing  the  thing  he  appears  to 


Ube  2>eat> 
level  of 
VntelU* 

cjcncc 


%ost  Hrt  of 


level  of 
IntcUi* 
gence 


know,  and,  unless  he  is  careful,  the  last  hope 
he  can  ever  have  of  really  knowing  anything. 
He  destroys  the  thing  a  man  does  his  knowing 
with.  It  is  not  the  least  pathetic  phase  of  the 
great  industry  of  being  well  informed,  that 
thousands  of  men  and  women  may  be  seen  on 
every  hand,  giving  up  their  lives  that  they 
may  appear  to  live,  and  giving  up  knowledge 
that  they  may  appear  to  know,  taking  pains  for 
vacuums.  Success  in  appearing  to  know  is  suc- 
cess in  locking  one's  self  outside  of  knowledge, 
and  all  that  can  be  said  of  the  most  learned 
man  that  lives  —  if  he  is  learned  in  this  way — 
is  that  he  knows  more  things  that  he  does  not 
know,  about  more  things,  than  any  man  in  the 
world.  He  runs  the  gamut  of  ignorance. 

In  the  meantime,  as  long  as  the  industry  of 
being  well  informed  is  the  main  ideal  of  living 
in  the  world,  as  long  as  every  man's  life, 
chasing  the  shadow  of  some  other  man's  life, 
goes  hurrying  by,  grasping  at  ignorance,  there 
is  nothing  we  can  do — most  of  us — as  educa- 
tors, but  to  rescue  a  youth  now  and  then  from 
the  rush  and  wait  for  results,  both  good  and 
evil,  to  work  themselves  out.  Those  of  us  who 
respect  every  man's  life,  and  delight  in  it  and 
in  the  dignity  of  the  things  that  belong  to  it, 
would  like  to  do  many  things.  We  should  be 
particularly  glad  to  join  hands  in  the  "  practi- 
cal" things  that  are  being  hurried  into  the 
hurry  around  us.  But  they  do  not  seem  to  us 
practical.  The  only  practical  thing  we  know 


TTbe  2>eao  %et>el  of  flntelliaence 


57 


of  that  can  be  done  with  a  man  who  does  not 
respect  himself,  is  to  get  him  to.  It  is  true, 
no  doubt,  that  we  cannot  respect  another  man's 
life  for  him,  but  we  are  profoundly  convinced 
that  we  cannot  do  anything  more  practical  for 
such  a  man's  life  than  respecting  it  until  he 
respects  it  himself,  and  we  are  convinced  also 
that  until  he  does  respect  it  himself,  respecting 
it  for  him  is  the  only  thing  that  any  one  else 
can  do — the  beginning  and  end  of  all  action  for 
him  and  of  all  knowledge.  Democracy  to-day 
in  education — as  in  everything  else — is  facing 
its  supreme  opportunity.  Going  about  in  the 
world  respecting  men  until  they  respect  them- 
selves is  almost  the  only  practical  way  there  is 
of  serving  them. 

We  find  it  necessary  to  believe  that  any  man 
in  this  present  day  who  shall  be  inspired  to  re- 
spect his  life,  who  shall  refuse  to  take  to  him- 
self the  things  that  do  not  belong  to  his  life, 
who  shall  break  with  the  appearance  of  things, 
who  shall  rejoice  in  the  things  that  are  really 
real  to  him — there  shall  be  no  withstanding 
him.  The  strength  of  the  universe  shall  be  in 
him.  He  shall  be  glorious  with  it.  The  man 
who  lives  down  through  the  knowledge  that 
he  has,  has  the  secret  of  all  knowledge  that  he 
does  not  have.  The  spirit  that  all  truths  are 
known  with,  becomes  his  spirit.  The  essen- 
tial mastery  over  all  real  things  and  over  all 
real  men  is  his  possession  forever. 

When  this  vital  and  delighted  knowledge — 


"Cbc  Deal) 
level  of 
fnteUb 

gence 


OLost  Hrt  of 


Ube  Hrt 


as  One 
Uthcs 


knowledge  that  is  based  on  facts — one's  own 
self-respecting  experience  with  facts,  shall  be- 
gin again  to  be  the  habit  of  the  educated  life, 
the  days  of  the  Dead  Level  of  Intelligence 
shall  be  numbered.  Men  are  going  to  be  the 
embodiment  of  the  truths  they  know — some- 
time— as  they  have  been  in  the  past.  When 
the  world  is  filled  once  more  with  men  who 
know  what  they  know,  learning  will  cease  to 
be  a  theory  about  a  theory  of  life,  and  children 
will  acquire  truths  as  helplessly  and  inescap- 
ably as  they  acquire  parents.  Truths  will  be 
learned  through  the  types  of  men  the  truths 
have  made.  A  man  was  meant  to  learn  truths 
by  gazing  up  and  down  lives — out  of  his  own 
life. 

When  these  principles  are  brought  home  to 
educators — when  they  are  practised  in  some 
degree  by  the  people,  instead  of  merely,  as 
they  have  always  been  before,  by  the  leaders 
of  the  people,  the  world  of  knowledge  shall  be 
a  new  world.  All  knowledge  shall  be  human, 
incarnate,  expressive,  artistic.  Whole  systems 
of  knowledge  shall  come  to  us  by  seeing  one 
another's  faces  on  the  street. 


XI 

art  of  IReabing  as  ©ne  likes 


Most  of  us  are  apt  to  discover  by  the  time  we 
are  too  old  to  get  over  it,  that  we  are  born  with 


Ube  Hrt  of  1Reaoin0  as  ©ne  Xifces 


59 


a  natural  gift  for  being  interested  in  ourselves. 
We  realise  in  a  general  way,  that  our  lives  are 
not  very  important — that  they  are  being  lived 
on  a  comparatively  obscure  but  comfortable 
little  planet,  on  a  side  street  in  space — but  no 
matter  how  much  we  study  astronomy,  nor 
how  fully  we  are  made  to  feel  how  many  other 
worlds  there  are  for  people  to  live  on,  and 
how  many  other  people  have  lived  on  this  one, 
we  are  still  interested  in  ourselves. 

The  fact  that  the  universe  is  very  large  is 
neither  here  nor  there  to  us,  in  a  certain  sense. 
It  is  a  mere  matter  of  size.  A  man  has  to  live 
on  it.  If  he  had  to  live  on  all  of  it,  it  would 
be  different.  It  naturally  comes  to  pass  that 
when  a  human  being  once  discovers  that  he  is 
born  in  a  universe  like  this,  his  first  business 
in  it  is  to  find  out  the  relation  of  the  nearest, 
most  sympathetic  part  of  it  to  himself. 

After  the  usual  first  successful  experiment  a 
child  makes  in  making  connection  with  the 
universe,  the  next  thing  he  learns  is  how  much 
of  the  universe  there  is  that  is  not  good  to  eat. 
He  does  not  quite  understand  it  at  first — the 
unswallowableness  of  things.  He  soon  comes 
to  the  conclusion  that,  although  it  is  worth 
while  as  a  general  principle,  in  dealing  with 
a  universe,  to  try  to  make  the  connection,  as 
a  rule,  with  one's  mouth,  it  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  succeed  except  part  of  the  time.  He 
looks  for  another  connection.  He  learns  that 
some  things  in  this  world  are  merely  made  to 


TTbe  Hrt 

of  TReaMmj 

aa  One 

Xifces 


6o 


%ost  Hrt  ot  IReafcing 


r  be  Hrt 

Of  tRcaMmj 

as  One 

lilies 


feel,  and  drop  on  the  floor.  He  discovers  each 
of  his  senses  by  trying  to  make  some  other 
sense  work.  If  his  mouth  waters  for  the  moon, 
and  he  tries  to  smack  his  lips  on  a  lullaby,  who 
shall  smile  at  him,  poor  little  fellow,  making 
his  sturdy  luuges  at  this  huge,  impenetrable 
world  ?  He  is  making  his  connection  and  get- 
ting his  hold  on  his  world  of  colour  and  sense 
and  sound,  with  infinitely  more  truth  and 
patience  and  precision  and  delight  than  nine 
out  of  ten  of  his  elders  are  doing  or  have  ever 
been  able  to  do,  in  the  world  of  books. 

The  books  that  were  written  to  be  breathed 
— gravely  chewed  upon  by  the  literary  infants 
of  this  modern  day, — who  can  number  them  ? 
— books  that  were  made  to  live  in — vast,  open 
clearings  in  the  thicket  of  life — chapters  like 
tents  to  dwell  in  under  the  wide  heaven,  visited 
like  railway  stations  by  excursion  trains  of 
readers, — books  that  were  made  to  look  down 
from — serene  mountain  heights  criticised  be- 
cause factories  are  not  founded  on  them — in 
every  reading-room  hundreds  of  people  (who 
has  not  seen  them  ?  ),  looking  up  inspirations 
in  encyclopaedias,  poring  over  poems  for  facts, 
looking  in  the  clouds  for  seeds,  digging  in  the 
ground  for  sunsets;  and  everywhere  through 
all  the  world,  the  whole  huddling,  crowding 
mob  of  those  who  read,  hastening  on  its  end- 
less paper-paved  streets,  from  the  pyramids  of 
Egypt  and  the  gates  of  Greece,  to  Pater  Noster 
Row  and  the  Old  Corner  Book  Store — nearly 


Hrt  ot  TReafcmg  as  <§>ne  Xlfees 


61 


all  of  them  trying  to  make  the  wrong  connec- 
tions with  the  right  things  or  the  right  con- 
nections with  things  they  have  no  connection 
with,  and  only  now  and  then  a  straggler  lag- 
ging behind  perhaps,  at  some  left-over  book- 
stall, who  truly  knows  how  to  read,  or  some 
beautiful,  over-grown  child  let  loose  in  a  li- 
brary—  making  connections  for  himself,  who 
knows  the  uttermost  joy  of  a  book. 

In  seeking  for  a  fundamental  principle  to 
proceed  upon  in  the  reading  of  books,  it  seems 
only  reasonable  to  assert  that  the  printed  uni- 
verse is  governed  by  the  same  laws  as  the  real 
one.  If  a  child  is  to  have  his  senses  about 
him — his  five  reading  senses — he  must  learn 
them  in  exactly  the  way  he  learns  his  five 
living  senses.  The  most  significant  fact  about 
the  way  a  child  learns  the  five  senses  he  has  to 
live  with  is,  that  no  one  can  teach  them  to 
him.  We  do  not  even  try  to.  There  are  still 
— thanks  to  a  most  merciful  Heaven  —  five 
things  left  in  the  poor,  experimented-on,  bat- 
tered, modern  child,  that  a  board  of  education 
cannot  get  at.  For  the  first  few  months  of  his 
life,  at  least,  it  is  generally  conceded,  the 
modern  infant  has  his  education — that  is,  his 
making  connection  with  things — entirely  in 
his  own  hands.  That  he  learns  more  these 
first  few  months  of  his  life  when  his  education 
is  in  his  own  hands,  than  he  learns  in  all  the 
later  days  when  he  is  surrounded  by  those  who 
hope  they  are  teaching  him  something,  it  may 


-Cbc  Hrt 

of  1Rca&iM0 

as  One 

llftea 


62 


OLost  Hrt  of  IReaoino 


Ube  Hrt 

of  treating 
as  One 
Xifeea 


not  be  fair  to  say;  but  while  it  cannot  be  said 
that  he  learns  more  perhaps,  what  he  does 
learn,  he  learns  better,  and  more  scientifically, 
than  he  is  ever  allowed  to  learn  with  ordinary 
parents  and  ordinary  teachers  and  text-books 
in  the  years  that  come  afterward.  With  most 
of  us,  this  first  year  or  so,  we  are  obliged  to 
confess,  was  the  chance  of  our  lives.  Some  of 
us  have  lived  long  enough  to  suspect  that  if 
we  have  ever  really  learned  anything  at  all  we 
must  have  learned  it  then. 

The  whole  problem  of  bringing  to  pass  in 
others  and  of  maintaining  in  ourselves  a  vital 
and  beautiful  relation  to  the  world  of  books, 
turns  entirely  upon  such  success  as  we  may 
have  in  calling  back  or  keeping  up  in  our  atti- 
tude toward  books,  the  attitude  of  the  new-born 
child  when  he  wakes  in  the  sunshine  of  the 
earth,  and  little  by  little  on  the  edge  of  the 
infinite,  groping  and  slow,  begins  to  make 
his  connections  with  the  universe.  It  cannot 
be  over-emphasised  that  this  new-born  child 
makes  these  connections  for  himself,  that  the 
entire  value  of  having  these  connections  made 
is  in  the  fact  that  he  makes  them  for  himself. 

As  between  the  books  in  a  library  that  ought 
to  be  read,  and  a  new  life  standing  in  it,  that 
ought  to  read  them,  the  sacred  thing  is  not  the 
books  the  child  ought  to  read.  The  sacred 
thing  is  the  way  the  child  feels  about  the 
books;  and  unless  the  new  life,  like  the  needle 
of  a  magnet  trembling  there  under  the  whole 


Hrt  ot  IReaMng  as  ©ne  Xifees 


wide  heaven  of  them  all,  is  allowed  to  turn  and 
poise  itself  by  laws  of  attraction  and  repulsion 
forever  left  out  of  our  hands,  the  magnet  is 
ruined.  It  is  made  a  dead  thing.  It  makes 
no  difference  how  many  similar  books  may  be 
placed  within  range  of  the  dead  thing  after- 
ward, nor  how  many  good  reasons  there  may 
be  for  the  dead  thing's  being  attracted  to 
them,  the  poise  of  the  magnet  toward  a  book, 
which  is  the  sole  secret  of  any  power  that  a 
book  can  have,  is  trained  and  disciplined  out 
of  it.  The  poise  of  the  magnet,  the  magnet's 
poising  itself,  is  inspiration,  and  inspiration  is 
what  a  book  is  for. 

If  John  Milton  had  had  any  idea  when  he 
wrote  the  little  book  called  Paradise  Lost  that 
it  was  going  to  be  used  mostly  during  the 
nineteenth  century  to  batter  children's  minds 
with,  it  is  doubtful  if  he  would  ever  have  had 
the  heart  to  write  it.  It  does  not  damage  a  book 
very  much  to  let  it  lie  on  a  wooden  shelf  little 
longer  than  it  ought  to.  But  to  come  crashing 
down  into  the  exquisite  filaments  of  a  human 
brain  with  it,  to  use  it  to  keep  a  brain  from 
continuing  to  be  a  brain — that  is,  an  organ 
with  all  its  reading  senses  acting  and  reacting 
warm  and  living  in  it,  is  a  very  serious  matter. 
It  always  ends  in  the  same  way,  this  modern 
brutality  with  books.  Even  Bibles  cannot 
stand  it.  Human  nature  stands  it  least  of  all. 
That  books  of  all  things  in  this  world,  made 
to  open  men's  instincts  with,  should  be  so 


tlbe  Brt 


as  One 
Ifftes 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaoina 


Ubc  Hrt 

of  Seating 
ae  One 
lifcea 


generally  used  to  shut  them  up  with,  is  one 
of  the  saddest  signs  we  have  of  the  caricature 
of  culture  that  is  having  its  way  in  our  modern 
world.  It  is  getting  so  that  the  only  way  the 
average  dinned-at,  educated  modern  boy,  shut 
in  with  masterpieces,  can  really  get  to  read  is  in 
some  still  overlooked  moment  when  people  are 
too  tired  of  him  to  do  him  good.  Then  softly, 
perhaps  guiltily,  left  all  by  himself  with  a  book, 
he  stumbles  all  of  a  sudden  on  his  soul  — 
steals  out  and  loves  something.  It  may  not  be 
the  best,  but  listening  to  the  singing  of  the 
crickets  is  more  worth  while  than  seeming  to 
listen  to  the  music  of  the  spheres.  It  leads  to 
the  music  of  the  spheres.  All  agencies,  per- 
sons, institutions,  or  customs  that  interfere 
with  this  sensitive,  self-discovering  moment 
when  a  human  spirit  makes  its  connection  in 
life  with  its  ideal,  that  interfere  with  its  being 
a  genuine,  instinctive,  free  and  beautiful  con- 
nection, living  and  growing  daily  of  itself, — all 
influences  that  tend  to  make  it  a  formal  con- 
nection or  a  merely  decorous  or  borrowed  one, 
whether  they  act  in  the  name  of  culture  or 
religion  or  the  state,  are  the  profoundest,  most 
subtle,  and  most  unconquerable  enemies  of 
culture  in  the  world. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  contend  for  the  doc- 
trine of  reading  as  one  likes — using  the  word 
' '  likes ' '  in  the  sense  of  direction  and  tempera- 
ment— in  its  larger  and  more  permanent  sense. 
It  is  but  necessary  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 


TIbe  Hrt  of  TReaoina  as  ©ne  Xifees 


that  the  universe  of  books  is  such  a  very  large 
and  various  universe,  a  universe  in  which  so 
much  that  one  likes  can  be  brought  to  bear  at 
any  given  point,  that  reading  as  one  likes  is 
almost  always  safe  in  it.  There  is  always 
more  of  what  one  likes  than  one  can  possibly 
read.  It  is  impossible  to  like  any  one  thing 
deeply  without  discovering  a  hundred  other 
things  to  like  with  it.  One  is  infallibly  led 
out.  If  one  touches  the  universe  vitally  at 
one  point,  all  the  rest  of  the  universe  flocks  to 
it.  It  is  the  way  a  universe  is  made. 

Almost  anything  can  be  accomplished  with 
a  child  who  has  a  habit  of  being  eager  with 
books,  who  respects  them  enough,  and  who  re- 
spects himself  enough,  to  leave  books  alone 
when  he  cannot  be  eager  with  them.  Eager- 
ness in  reading  counts  as  much  as  it  does  in 
living.  A  live  reader  who  reads  the  wrong 
books  is  more  promising  than  a  dead  one  who 
reads  the  right  ones.  Being  alive  is  the  point. 
Anything  can  be  done  with  life.  It  is  the  Seed 
of  Infinity. 

While  much  might  be  said  for  the  topical  or 
purely  scientific  method  in  learning  how  to 
read,  it  certainly  is  not  claiming  too  much  for 
the  human,  artistic,  or  personal  point  of  view 
in  reading,  that  it  comes  first  in  the  order  of 
time  in  a  developing  life  and  first  in  the  order 
of  strategic  importance.  Topical  or  scientific 
reading  cannot  be  fruitful ;  it  cannot  even  be 
scientific,  in  the  larger  sense,  except  as,  in  its 


TIbe  Hrt 

of  "Keafcing 

as  One 

Itfce0 


66 


Xost  Brt  of 


Ube  Hrt 


as  One 
%if:cs 


own  time  and  in  its  own  way,  it  selects  itself 
in  due  time  in  a  boy's  life,  buds  out,  and  is 
allowed  to  branch  out,  from  his  own  inner 
personal  reading. 

As  the  first  and  most  important  and  most  far- 
reaching  of  the  arts  of  reading  is  the  Art  of 
Reading  as  One  Likes,  the  principles,  inspira- 
tions, and  difficulties  of  reading  as  one  likes 
are  the  first  to  be  considered  in  the  following 
chapters. 

The  fact  that  the  art  of  reading  as  one  likes 
is  the  most  difficult,  perhaps  the  most  impossi- 
ble, of  all  the  arts  in  modern  times,  constitutes 
one  of  those  serio-comic  problems  of  civilisation 
— a  problem  which  civilisation  itself,  with  all 
its  swagger  of  science,  its  literary  braggadocio, 
its  Library  Cure,  with  all  its  Board  Schools, 
Commissioners  of  Education  and  specialists, 
and  bishops  and  newsboys,  all  hard  at  work 
upon  it,  is  only  beginning  to  realise. 


The  Second  Interference: 

The  Disgrace  of  the 

Imagination 


T 


Wonfcerins  Wfy>  ©ne 
Born 

• 

HE  real  trouble  with  most  of  the  attempts 
that  teachers  and  parents  make,  to  teach 
children  a  vital  relation  to  books,  is  that  they 
do  not  believe  in  the  books  and  that  they  do 
not  believe  in  the  children. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  find  a  child  who, 
in  one  direction  or  another,  the  first  few  years 
of  his  life,  is  not  creative.  It  is  almost  impos- 
sible to  find  a  parent  or  a  teacher  who  does  not 
discourage  this  creativeness.  The  discourage- 
ment begins  in  a  small  way,  at  first,  in  the 


On 


One  VCl;iti 
JGorn 


68 


OLost  Brt  ot 


On 

tClen&crs 

ing  IClbv 

Otic  Was 

JBorn 


average  family,  but  as  the  more  creative  a 
child  becomes  the  more  inconvenient  he  Is,  as 
a  general  rule,  every  time  a  boy  is  caught 
being  creative,  something  has  to  be  done  to  him 
about  it. 

It  is  a  part  of  the  nature  of  creativeness  that 
it  involves  being  creative  a  large  part  of  the 
time  in  the  wrong  direction.  Half-proud  and 
half-stupefied  parents,  failing  to  see  that  the 
mischief  in  a  boy  is  the  entire  basis  of  his  edu- 
cation, the  mainspring  of  his  life,  not  being 
able  to  break  the  mainspring  themselves,  fre- 
quently hire  teachers  to  help  them.  The 
teacher  who  can  break  a  mainspring  first  and 
keep  it  from  getting  mended,  is  often  the  most 
esteemed  in  the  community.  Those  who  have 
broken  the  most,  "  secure  results."  The  spec- 
tacle of  the  mechanical,  barren,  conventional 
society  so  common  in  the  present  day,  to  all 
who  love  their  kind  is  a  sign  there  is  no  with- 
standing. It  is  a  spectacle  we  can  only  stand 
and  watch  —  some  of  us, —  the  huge,  dreary 
kinetoscope  of  it,  grinding  its  cogs  and  wheels, 
and  swinging  its  weary  faces  past  our  eyes. 
The  most  common  sight  in  it  and  the  one  that 
hurts  the  hardest,  is  the  boy  who  could  be 
made  into  a  man  out  of  the  parts  of  him  that 
his  parents  and  teachers  are  trying  to  throw 
away.  The  faults  of  the  average  child,  as 
things  are  going  just  now,  would  be  the  making 
of  him,  if  he  could  be  placed  in  seeing  hands. 
It  may  not  be  possible  to  educate  a  boy  by 


©n  Wonfcerina 


<S>ne  Mas  Born 


69 


using  what  has  been  left  out  of  him,  but  it  is 
more  than  possible  to  begin  his  education  by 
using  what  ought  to  have  been  left  out  of  him. 
So  long  as  parents  and  teachers  are  either 
too  dull  or  too  busy  to  experiment  with  mis- 
chief, to  be  willing  to  pay  for  a  child's  original- 
ity what  originality  costs,  only  the  most  hope- 
less children  can  be  expected  to  amount  to 
anything.  If  we  fail  to  see  that  originality  is 
worth  paying  for,  that  the  risk  involved  in  a 
child's  not  being  creative  is  infinitely  more 
serious  than  the  risk  involved  in  his  being 
creative  in  the  wrong  direction,  there  is  little 
either  for  us  or  for  our  children  to  hope  for,  as 
the  years  go  on,  except  to  grow  duller  together. 
We  do  not  like  this  growing  duller  together 
very  well,  perhaps,  but  we  have  the  feeling  at 
least  that  we  have  been  educated,  and  when 
our  children  become  at  last  as  little  interested 
in  the  workings  of  their  minds,  as  parents  and 
teachers  are  in  theirs,  we  have  the  feeling  that 
they  also  have  been  educated.  We  are  not  un- 
willing to  admit,  in  a  somewhat  useless,  kindly, 
generalising  fashion,  that  vital  and  beautiful 
children  delight  in  things,  in  proportion  as 
they  discover  them,  or  are  allowed  to  make 
them  up,  but  we  do  not  propose  in  the  mean- 
time to  have  our  own  children  any  more  vital 
and  beautiful  than  we  can  help.  In  four  or 
five  years  they  discover  that  a  home  is  a  place 
where  the  more  one  thinks  of  things,  the  more 
unhappy  he  is.  In  four  or  five  years  more 


On 


One  lUas 
JBorn 


Xost  art  of  IReaoino 


On 


One  tUas 
S3orn 


they  learn  that  a  school  is  a  place  where 
children  are  expected  not  to  use  their  brains 
while  they  are  being  cultivated.  As  long  as 
he  is  at  his  mother's  breast  the  typical  Ameri- 
can child  finds  that  he  is  admired  for  thinking 
of  things.  When  he  runs  around  the  house 
he  finds  gradually  that  he  is  admired  very 
much  less  for  thinking  of  things.  At  school 
he  is  disciplined  for  it.  In  a  library,  if  he  has 
an  uncommonly  active  mind,  and  takes  the 
liberty  of  being  as  alive  there,  as  he  is  out- 
doors, if  he  roams  through  the  books,  vaults 
over  their  fences,  climbs  up  their  mountains, 
and  eats  of  their  fruit,  and  dreams  by  their 
streams,  or  is  caught  camping  out  in  their 
woods,  he  is  made  an  example  of.  He  is 
treated  as  a  tramp  and  an  idler,  and  if  he  can- 
not be  held  down  with  a  dictionary  he  is  looked 
upon  as  not  worth  educating.  If  his  parents 
decide  he  shall  be  educated  anyway,  dead  or 
alive,  or  in  spite  of  his  being  alive,  the  more 
he  is  educated  the  more  he  wonders  why  he 
was  born  and  the  more  his  teachers  from 
behind  their  dictionaries,  and  the  other  boys 
from  underneath  their  dictionaries,  wonder 
why  he  was  born.  While  it  may  be  a  general 
principle  that  the  longer  a  boy  wonders  why 
he  was  born  in  conditions  like  these,  and  the 
longer  his  teachers  and  parents  wonder,  the 
more  there  is  of  him,  it  may  be  observed  that 
a  general  principle  is  not  of  very  much  comfort 
to  the  boy  while  the  process  of  wondering  is 


TKHcm&ering 


©ne  Mas  Born 


going  on.  There  seems  to  be  no  escape  from 
the  process,  and  if,  while  he  is  being  educated, 
he  is  not  allowed  to  use  himself,  he  can  hardly 
be  blamed  for  spending  a  good  deal  of  his  time 
in  wondering  why  he  is  not  some  one  else.  In 
a  half-seeing,  half-blinded  fashion  he  struggles 
on.  If  he  is  obstinate  enough,  he  manages  to 
struggle  through  with  his  eyes  shut.  Some- 
times he  belongs  to  a  higher  kind,  and  opens 
his  eyes  and  struggles. 

With  the  average  boy  the  struggle  with  the 
School  and  the  Church  is  less  vigorous  than 
the  struggle  at  home.  It  is  more  hopeless. 
A  mother  is  a  comparatively  simple  affair. 
One  can  either  manage  a  mother  or  be  man- 
aged. It  is  merely  a  matter  of  time.  It  is 
soon  settled.  There  is  something  there.  She 
is  not  boundless,  intangible.  The  School  and 
the  Church  are  different.  With  the  first  fresh 
breaths  of  the  world  tingling  in  him,  the  youth 
stands  before  them.  They  are  entirely  new  to 
him.  They  are  huge,  immeasurable,  unac- 
countable. They  loom  over  him — a  part  of 
the  structure  of  the  universe  itself.  A  mother 
can  meet  one  in  a  door.  The  problem  is  con- 
centrated. The  Church  stretches  beyond  the 
sunrise.  The  School  is  part  of  the  horizon  of 
the  earth,  and  what  after  all  is  his  own  life  and 
who  is  he  that  he  should  take  account  of  it  ? 
Out  of  space — out  of  time — out  of  history  they 
come  to  him  —  the  Church  and  the  School. 
They  are  the  assembling  of  all  mankind  around 


On 

1Uont»crs 

ing  Ulbv 

One  TICla0 

Kocn 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


Cn 

TOont>cr= 


One  XUas 
JBorn 


his  soul.  Each  with  its  Cone  of  Ether,  its 
desire  to  control  the  breath  of  his  life,  its 
determination  to  do  his  breathing  for  him,  to 
push  the  Cone  down  over  him,  looms  above 
him  and  above  all  in  sight,  before  he  speaks — 
before  he  is  able  to  speak. 

It  is  soon  over.  He  lies  passive  and  insen- 
sible at  last, — as  convenient  as  though  he  were 
dead,  and  the  Church  and  the  School  operate 
upon  him.  They  remove  as  many  of  his 
natural  organs  as  they  can,  put  in  Presbyterian 
ones  perhaps,  or  School-Board  ones  instead. 
Those  that  cannot  be  removed  are  numbed. 
When  the  time  is  fulfilled  and  the  youth  is 
cured  of  enough  life  at  last  to  like  living  with 
the  dead,  and  when  it  is  thought  he  is  enough 
like  every  one  else  to  do,  he  is  given  his  degree 
and  sewed  up. 

After  the  sewing  up  his  history  is  better 
imagined  than  described.  Not  being  interest- 
ing to  himself,  he  is  not  apt  to  be  very  in- 
teresting to  any  one  else,  and  because  of  his 
lack  of  interest  in  himself  he  is  called  the 
average  man.* 

*  A  Typical  Case:  "  The  brain  was  cut  away  neatly 
and  dressed.  A  healthy  yearling  calf  was  tied  down, 
her  skull  cut  away,  and  a  lobe  of  brain  removed  and 
fitted  into  the  cavity  in  I/s  head.  The  wound  was 
dressed  and  trephined,  and  the  results  awaited.  The 
calf's  head  was  fixed  up  with  half  a  brain  in  it.  Both 
the  man  and  the  calf  have  progressed  satisfactorily, 
and  the  man  is  nearly  as  well  as  before  the  operation." 
— Daily  Paper. 


<§>ne  Mas  3Born 


73 


The  main  distinction  of  every  greater  or  more 
extraordinary  book  is  that  it  has  been  written 
by  an  extraordinary  man — a  natural  or  wild 
man,  a  man  of  genius,  who  has  never  been 
operated  on.  The  main  distinction  of  the  man 
of  talent  is  that  he  has  somehow  managed  to 
escape  a  complete  operation.  It  is  a  matter  of 
common  observation  in  reading  biography  that 
in  proportion  as  men  have  had  lasting  power 
in  the  world  there  has  been  something  irregu- 
lar in  their  education.  These  irregularities, 
whether  they  happen  to  be  due  to  overwhelm- 
ing circumstance  or  to  overwhelming  tempera- 
ment, seem  to  sum  themselves  up  in  one 
fundamental  and  comprehensive  irregularity 
that  penetrates  them  all — namely,  every  power- 
ful mind,  in  proportion  to  its  power,  either  in 
school  or  out  of  it  or  in  spite  of  it,  has  educated 
itself.  The  ability  that  many  men  have  used 
to  avoid  being  educated  is  exactly  the  same 
ability  they  have  used  afterward  to  move  the 
world  with.  In  proportion  as  they  have  moved 
the  world,  they  are  found  to  have  kept  the  lead 
in  their  education  from  their  earliest  years,  to 
have  had  a  habit  of  initiative  as  well  as  hospi- 
tality, to  have  maintained  a  creative,  selective, 
active  attitude  toward  all  persons  and  toward 
all  books  that  have  been  brought  within  range 
of  their  lives. 


On 
tllontcr* 


One  XUas 
JSom 


74 


OLost  Hrt  of  IReaofng 


Ube  Cop 
of  tbe 
SSurcau 

principle 


II 


Gop  of  tbe  Bureau  principle 


The  experience  of  being  robbed  of  a  story 
we  are  about  to  read,  by  the  good  friend  who 
cannot  help  telling  how  it  comes  out,  is  an 
occasional  experience  in  the  lives  of  older 
people,  but  it  sums  up  the  main  sensation  of 
life  in  the  career  of  a  child.  The  whole  exist- 
ence of  a  boy  may  be  said  to  be  a  daily  — 
almost  hourly—  struggle  to  escape  from  being 
told  things. 

It  has  been  found  that  the  best  way  to  em- 
phasise a  fact  in  the  mind  of  a  bright  boy  is  to 
discover  some  way  of  not  saying  anything 
about  it.  And  this  is  not  because  human 
nature  is  obstinate,  but  because  facts  have  been 
intended  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  to 
speak  for  themselves,  and  to  speak  better  than 
any  one  can  speak  for  them.  When  a  fact 
speaks,  God  speaks.  Considering  the  way 
that  most  persons  who  are  talking  about  the 
truth  see  fit  to  rush  in  and  interrupt  Him,  the 
wonder  is  not  that  children  grow  less  and  less 
interested  in  truth  as  they  grow  older,  but  that 
they  are  interested  in  truth  at  all  —  even  lies 
about  the  truth. 

The  real  trouble  with  most  men  and  women 
as  parents  is,  that  they  have  had  to  begin  life 
with  parents  of  their  own.  When  the  child's 
first  memory  of  God  is  a  father  or  mother  in- 


Uop  of  tbe  ^Bureau  principle 


75 


terrupting  Him,  he  is  apt  to  be  under  the  im- 
pression, when  he  grows  up,  that  God  can  only 
be  introduced  to  his  own  children  by  never 
being  allowed  to  get  a  word  in.  If  we  as 
much  as  see  a  Fact  coming  toward  a  child — 
most  of  us — we  either  run  out  where  the  child 
is,  and  bring  him  into  the  house  and  cry  over 
him,  or  we  rush  to  his  side  and  look  anxious 
and  stand  in  front  of  the  Fact,  and  talk  to  him 
about  it. 

And  yet  it  is  doubtful  if  there  has  ever  been 
a  boy  as  yet  worth  mentioning,  who  did  not 
wish  we  would  stand  a  little  more  one  side — 
let  him  have  it  out  with  things.  He  is  very 
weary — if  he  really  amounts  to  anything — of 
having  everything  about  him  prepared  for 
him.  There  has  never  been  a  live  boy  who 
would  not  throw  a  store-plaything  away  in  two 
or  three  hours  for  a  comparatively  imperfect 
plaything  he  had  made  himself.  He  is  equally 
indifferent  to  a  store  Fact,  and  a  boy  who  does 
not  see  through  a  store-God,  or  a  store-book, 
or  a  store-education  sooner  than  ninety-nine 
parents  out  of  a  hundred  and  sooner  than  most 
synods,  is  not  worth  bringing  up. 

No  just  or  comprehensive  principle  can  be 
found  to  govern  the  reading  of  books  that 
cannot  be  made  to  apply,  by  one  who  really 
believes  it  (though  in  varying  degrees),  to  the 
genius  and  to  the  dolt.  It  is  a  matter  of  his- 
tory that  a  boy  of  fine  creative  powers  can 
only  be  taught  a  true  relation  to  books  through 


"Cbe  TTop 
of  tbe 
Kurcau 

principle 


76 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


Ube  Cop 

of  tbe 

Bureau 

principle 


an  appeal  to  his  own  discoveries;  but  what  is 
being  especially  contended  for,  and  what  most 
needs  to  be  emphasised  in  current  education, 
is  the  fact  that  the  boy  of  ordinary  creative 
powers  can  only  be  taught  to  read  in  the  same- 
way — by  a  slower,  broader,  and  more  patient 
appeal  to  his  own  discoveries.  The  boy  of  no 
creative  powers  whatever,  if  he  is  ever  born, 
should  not  be  taught  to  read  at  all.  Creation 
is  the  essence  of  knowing,  and  teaching  him 
to  read  merely  teaches  him  more  ways  of  not 
knowing.  It  gives  him  a  wider  range  of  places 
to  be  a  nobody  in — takes  away  his  last  oppor- 
tunity for  thinking  of  anything — that  is,  get- 
ting the  meaning  of  anything  for  himself.  If 
a  man's  heart  does  not  beat  for  him,  why  sub- 
stitute a  hot- water  bottle?  The  less  a  mind 
is  able  to  do,  the  less  it  can  afford  to  have  any- 
thing done  for  it.  It  will  be  a  great  day  for 
education  when  we  all  have  learned  that  the 
genius  and  the  dolt  can  only  be  educated — at 
different  rates  of  speed — in  exactly  the  same 
way.  The  trouble  with  our  education  now  is, 
that  many  of  us  do  not  see  that  a  boy  who  has 
been  presented  with  an  imitation  brain  is  a 
deal  worse  off  than  a  boy  who,  in  spite  of  his 
teachers,  has  managed  to  save  his  real  one, 
and  has  not  used  it  yet. 

It  is  dangerous  to  give  a  program  for  a  prin- 
ciple to  those  who  do  not  believe  in  the 
principle,  and  who  do  not  believe  in  it  instinct- 
ively, but  if  a  program  were  to  be  given  it 


Ube  Hop  of  tbe  Bureau  iprinclple 


77 


would  be  something  like  this:  It  would  assume 
that  the  best  way  to  do  with  an  uncreative 
mind  is  to  put  the  owner  of  it  where  his  mind 
will  be  obliged  to  create. 

First.  Decide  what  the  owner  of  the  mind 
most  wants  in  the  world. 

Second.  Put  this  thing,  whatever  it  may  be, 
where  the  owner  of  the  mind  cannot  get  it 
unless  he  uses  his  mind.  Take  pains  to  put 
it  where  he  can  get  it,  if  he  does  use  his  mind. 

Third.  Lure  him  on.     It  is  education. 

If  this  principle  is  properly  applied  to  books, 
there  is  not  a  human  being  living  on  the  earth 
who  will  not  find  himself  capable  of  reading 
books — as  far  as  he  goes — with  his  whole  mind 
and  his  whole  body.  He  will  read  a  printed 
page  as  eagerly  as  he  lives,  and  he  will  read  it 
in  exactly  the  same  way  that  he  lives — with 
his  imagination.  A  boy  lives  with  his  imagi- 
nation every  hour  of  his  life — except  in  school. 
The  moment  he  discovers,  or  is  allowed  to 
discover,  that  reading  a  book  and  living  a  day 
are  very  much  alike,  that  they  are  both  parts 
of  the  same  act,  and  that  they  are  both  prop- 
erly done  in  the  same  way,  he  will  drink  up 
knowledge  as  Job  did  scorning,  like  water. 

But  it  is  objected  that  many  children  are 
entirely  imitative,  and  that  the  imagination 
cannot  be  appealed  to  with  them  and  that  they 
cut  themselves  off  from  creativeness  at  every 
point. 

While  it  is  inevitable  in  the  nature  of  things 


"Cbc  Uop 

of  tbe 

JBureau 

principle 


78 


Xost  art  of  TReaofno 


tEbe  Uop 

of  tbe 

JSurcau 

principle 


that  many  children  should  be  largely  imitative, 
there  is  not  a  child  that  does  not  do  some  of 
his  imitating  in  a  creative  way,  give  the  hint 
to  his  teachers  even  in  his  imitations,  of  where 
his  creativeness  would  come  if  it  were  allowed 
to.  His  very  blunders  in  imitating,  point  to 
desires  that  would  make  him  creative  of  them- 
selves, if  followed  up.  Some  children  have 
many  desires  in  behalf  of  which  they  become 
creative.  Others  are  creative  only  in  behalf 
of  a  few.  But  there  is  always  a  single  desire 
in  a  child's  nature  through  which  his  creative- 
ness  can  be  called  out. 

A  boy  learns  to  live,  to  command  his  body, 
through  the  desires  which  make  him  creative 
with  it — hunger,  and  movement,  and  sleep — 
desires  the  very  vegetables  are  stirred  with, 
and  the  boy  who  does  not  find  himself  respond- 
ing to  them,  who  can  help  responding  to  them, 
does  not  exist.  There  may  be  times  when  a 
boy  has  no  desire  to  fill  himself  with  food,  and 
when  he  has  no  desire  to  think,  but  if  he  is 
kept  hungry  he  is  soon  found  doing  both — 
thinking  things  into  his  stomach.  A  stomach, 
in  the  average  boy,  will  all  but  take  the  part 
of  a  brain  itself,  for  the  time  being,  to  avoid 
being  empty.  If  a  human  being  is  alive  at  all, 
there  is  always  at  least  one  desire  he  can  be 
educated  with,  prodded  into  creativeness,  until 
he  learns  the  habit  and  the  pleasure  of  it. 
The  best  qualification  for  a  nurse  for  a  child 
whose  creativeness  turns  on  his  stomach,  is  a 


TTop  of  tbe  Bureau  principle 


79 


natural  gift  for  keeping  food  on  the  tops  of 
bureaus  and  shelves  just  out  of  reach.  The 
best  qualification  for  a  teacher  is  infinite  con- 
trivance in  high  bureaus.  The  applying  of 
the  Top  of  the  High  Bureau  to  all  knowledge 
and  to  all  books  is  what  true  education  is  for. 

It  is  generally  considered  a  dangerous  thing 
to  do,  to  turn  a  child  loose  in  a  library.  It 
might  fairly  be  called  a  dangerous  thing  to  do 
if  it  were  not  much  more  dangerous  not  to. 
The  same  forces  that  wrought  themselves  into 
the  books  when  they  were  being  made  can  be 
trusted  to  gather  and  play  across  them  on  the 
shelves.  These  forces  are  the  self-propelling 
and  self-healing  forces  of  the  creative  mood. 
The  creative  mood  protects  the  books,  and  it 
protects  all  who  come  near  the  books.  It  pro- 
tects from  the  inside.  It  toughens  and  makes 
supple.  Parents  who  cannot  trust  a  boy  to 
face  the  weather  in  a  library  should  never  let 
him  outdoors. 

Trusting  a  boy  to  the  weather  in  a  library 
may  have  its  momentary  embarrassments,  but 
it  is  immeasurably  the  shortest  and  most  nat- 
ural way  to  bring  him  into  a  vital  connection 
with  books.  The  first  condition  of  a  vital  con- 
nection with  books  is  that  he  shall  make  the 
connection  for  himself.  The  relation  will  be 
vital  in  proportion  as  he  makes  it  himself. 

The  fact  that  he  will  begin  to  use  his  five 
reading  senses  by  trying  to  connect  in  the 
wrong  way,  or  by  connecting  with  the  wrong 


8o 


%ost  Hrt  of 


Ube  "Cop 

of  tbe 

Kurcau 

principle 


books  or  parts  of  books,  is  a  reason,  not  for 
action  on  the  part  of  parents  and  teachers,  but 
for  inspired  waiting.  As  a  vital  relation  to 
books  is  the  most  immeasurable  outfit  for  living 
and  the  most  perfect  protection  against  the 
dangers  of  life,  a  boy  can  have,  the  one  point 
to  be  borne  in  mind  is  not  the  book  but  the 
boy — the  instinct  of  curiosity  in  the  boy. 

A  boy  who  has  all  his  good  discoveries  in 
books  made  for  him — spoiled  for  him,  if  he  has 
any  good  material  in  him  —  will  proceed  to 
make  bad  ones.  The  vices  would  be  nearly  as 
safe  from  interference  as  the  virtues,  if  they 
were  faithfully  cultivated  in  Sunday-schools  or 
by  average  teachers  in  day-schools.  Sin  itself 
is  uninteresting  when  one  knows  all  about  it. 
The  interest  of  the  average  young  man  in 
many  a  more  important  sin  to-day  is  only  kept 
up  by  the  fact  that  no  one  stands  by  with  a 
book  teaching  him  how  to  do  it.  Whatever 
the  expression  "original  sin  "  may  have  meant 
in  the  first  place,  it  means  now  that  we  are  full 
of  original  sin  because  we  are  not  given  a 
chance  to  be  original  in  anything  else.  A 
virtue  may  be  defined  as  an  act  so  good  that  a 
religiously  trained  youth  cannot  possibly  learn 
anything  more  about  it.  A  classic  is  a  pleas- 
ure hurried  into  a  responsibility,  a  book  read 
by  every  man  before  he  has  anything  to  read 
it  with.  A  classical  author  is  a  man  who,  if 
he  could  look  ahead — could  see  the  genera- 
tions standing  in  rows  to  read  his  book, 


TTbe  Uop  of  tbe  JBureau  principle 


81 


toeing  the  line  to  love  it — would  not  read  it 
himself. 

Any  training  in  the  use  of  books  that  does 
not  base  its  whole  method  of  rousing  the  in- 
stinct of  curiosity,  and  keeping  it  aroused,  is  a 
wholesale  slaughter,  not  only  of  the  minds  that 
might  live  in  the  books,  but  of  the  books  them- 
selves. To  ignore  the  central  curiosity  of  a 
child's  life,  his  natural  power  of  self-discovery 
in  books,  is  to  dispense  with  the  force  of  gravity 
in  books,  instead  of  taking  advantage  of  it. 


U be  Cop 

of  tbe 

Cureau 

principle 


82 


Evil 


The  Third  Interference: 

The  Unpopularity  of  the 

First  Person  Singular 


Gbe  Jfirst  person  a  IRecessarp  Evil 

•Cbejftrst  >^~>  REAT  emphasis  is  being  laid  at  the 
VJ  present  time  upon  the  tools  that  readers 
ought  to  have  to  do  their  reading  with.  We 
seem  to  be  living  in  a  reference-book  age. 
Whatever  else  may  be  claimed  for  our  own 
special  generation  it  stands  out  as  having  one 
inspiration  that  is  quite  its  own — the  inspira- 
tion of  conveniences.  That  these  conveniences 
have  their  place,  that  one  ought  to  have  the 
best  of  them  there  can  be  no  doubt,  but  it  is 
very  important  to  bear  in  mind,  particularly  in 
the  present  public  mood,  that  if  one  cannot 


Ube  jfftst  person  a  IRecessarg  Evil 


have  all  of  these  conveniences,  or  even  the  best 
of  them,  the  one  absolutely  necessary  reference 
book  in  reading  the  masters  of  literature  is  one 
that  every  man  has. 

It  is  something  of  a  commonplace — a  rather 
modest  volume  with  most  of  us,  summed  up  on 
a  tombstone  generally,  easily  enough,  but  we 
are  bound  to  believe  after  all  is  said  and  done 
that  the  great  masterpiece  among  reference 
books,  for  every  man, — the  one  originally  in- 
tended by  the  Creator  for  every  man  to  use, — 
is  the  reference  book  of  his  own  life.  We  be- 
lieve that  the  one  direct  and  necessary  thing 
for  a  man  to  do,  if  he  is  going  to  be  a  good 
reader,  is  to  make  this  reference  book — his 
own  private  edition  of  it — as  large  and  com- 
plete as  possible.  Everything  refers  to  it, 
whatever  his  reading  is.  Shakespeare  and  the 
New  York  World,  Homer  and  Harper' s  Bazar, 
Victor  Hugo  and  The  Forum,  Babyhood  and 
the  Bible  all  refer  to  it, — are  all  alike  in  making 
their  references  (when  they  are  really  looked 
up)  to  private  editions.  Other  editions  do  not 
work.  In  proportion  as  they  are  powerful  in 
modern  life,  all  the  books  and  papers  that  we 
have  are  engaged  in  the  business  of  going 
about  the  world  discovering  people  to  them- 
selves, unroofing  first  person  singulars  in  it, 
getting  people  to  use  their  own  reference  books 
on  all  life.  Literature  is  a  kind  of  vast  inter- 
national industry  of  comparing  life.  We  read 
to  look  up  references  in  our  own  souls.  The 


Ube  first 

person  a 

•necessary 

Evil 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


Ube  Jfirat 
person  a 

IWcccsearv: 
Evil 


immortality  of  Homer  and  the  circulation  of 
the  Ladies'  Home  Journal  both  conform  to  this 
fact,  and  it  is  equally  the  secret  of  the  last 
page  of  Harper's  Bazar  and  of  Hamlet  and  of 
the  grave  and  monthly  lunge  of  The  Forum  at 
passing  events.  The  difference  of  appeal  may 
be  as  wide  as  the  east  and  the  west,  but  the 
east  and  the  west  are  in  human  nature  and  not 
in  the  nature  of  the  appeal.  The  larger  selves 
look  themselves  up  in  the  greater  writers  and 
the  smaller  selves  spell  themselves  out  in  the 
smaller  ones.  It  is  here  we  all  behold  as  in 
some  vast  reflection  or  mirage  of  the  reading 
world  our  own  souls  crowding  and  jostling, 
little  and  great,  against  the  walls  of  their 
years,  seeking  to  be  let  out,  to  look  out,  to  look 
over,  to  look  up — that  they  may  find  their  pos- 
sible selves. 

When  men  are  allowed  to  follow  what  might 
be  called  the  forces  of  nature  in  the  reading 
world  they  are  seen  to  read : 

i  st.  About  themselves. 

2nd.  About  people  they  know. 

3rd.  About  people  they  want  to  know. 

4th.  God. 

Next  to  their  interest  in  persons  is  their  in- 
terest in  things: 

ist.  Things  that  they  have  themselves. 

2nd.  Things  that  people  they  know,  have. 

3rd.  Things  they  want  to  have. 

4th.  Things  they  ought  to  want  to  have. 

5th.  Other  things. 


ZTbe  Jfirst  person  a  IRecessarg 


6th.  The  universe — things  God  has. 

7th.  God. 

A  scale  like  this  may  not  be  very  compli- 
mentary to  human  nature.  Some  of  us  feel 
that  it  is  appropriate  and  possibly  a  little  re- 
ligious to  think  that  it  is  not.  But  the  scale 
is  here.  It  is  mere  psychological-matter-of- 
fact.  It  is  the  way  things  are  made,  and 
while  it  may  not  be  quite  complimentary  to 
human  nature,  it  seems  to  be  more  compli- 
mentary to  God  to  believe,  in  spite  of  appear- 
ances, that  this  scale  from  I  to  God  is  made 
right  and  should  be  used  as  it  stands.  It 
seems  to  have  been  in  general  use  among  our 
more  considerable  men  in  the  world  and  among 
all  our  great  men  and  among  all  who  have 
made  others  great.  They  do  not  seem  to  have 
been  ashamed  of  it.  They  have  climbed  up 
frankly  on  it — most  of  them,  in  full  sight  of  all 
men — from  I  to  God.  They  have  claimed  that 
everybody  (including  themselves)  was  identi- 
fied with  God,  and  they  have  made  people  be- 
lieve it.  It  is  the  few  in  every  generation 
who  have  dared  to  believe  in  this  scale,  and 
who  have  used  it,  who  have  been  the  leaders 
of  the  rest.  The  measure  of  a  man's  being 
seems  to  be  the  swiftness  with  which  his  nature 
runs  from  the  bottom  of  this  scale  to  the  top, 
the  swiftness  with  which  he  identifies  himself, 
says  ' '  I  "  in  all  of  it.  The  measure  of  his  abil- 
ity to  read  on  any  particular  subject  is  the  swift- 
ness with  which  he  runs  the  scale  from  the 


Ube  rfret 
person  a 
•Recesaanj 

Evil 


86 


SLost  Hrt  of 


Ube  first 
person  a 
TUcesaar? 

evil 


bottom  to  the  top  on  that  subject,  makes  the 
trip  with  his  soul  from  his  own  little  I  to  God. 
When  he  has  mastered  the  subject,  he  makes 
the  run  almost  without  knowing  it,  sees  it  as 
it  is,  i.  e.,  identifies  himself  with  God  on  it. 
The  principle  is  one  which  reaches  under  all 
mastery  in  the  world,  from  the  art  of  prophecy 
even  to  the  art  of  politeness.  The  man  who 
makes  the  trip  on  any  subject  from  the  first 
person  out  through  the  second  person,  to  the 
farthest  bounds  of  the  third  person, — that  is, 
who  identifies  himself  with  all  men's  lives,  is 
called  the  poet  or  seer,  the  master-lover  of  per- 
sons. The  man  who  makes  the  trip  most 
swiftly  from  his  own  things  to  other  men's 
things  and  to  God's  things — the  Universe — is 
called  the  scientist,  the  master-lover  of  things. 
The  God  is  he  who  identifies  his  own  personal 
life  with  all  lives  and  his  own  things  with  all 
men's  things — who  says  "I"  forever  every- 
where. 

The  reason  that  the  Hebrew  Bible  has  had 
more  influence  in  history  than  all  other  litera- 
tures combined,  is  that  there  are  fewer  emascu- 
lated men  in  it.  The  one  really  fundamental 
and  astonishing  thing  about  the  Bible  is  the 
way  that  people  have  of  talking  about  them- 
selves in  it.  No  other  nation  that  has  ever 
existed  on  the  earth  would  ever  have  thought 
of  daring  to  publish  a  book  like  the  Bible.  So 
far  as  the  plot  is  concerned,  the  fundamental 
literary  conception,  it  is  all  the  Bible  comes  to 


TTbe  JFfrst  person  a  Hecessars 


practically — two  or  three  thousand  years  of  it 
— a  long  row  of  people  talking  about  them- 
selves. The  Hebrew  nation  has  been  the 
leading  power  in  history  because  the  Hebrew 
man,  in  spite  of  all  his  faults  has  always  had 
the  feeling  that  God  sympathised  with  him,  in 
being  interested  in  himself.  He  has  dared  to 
feel  identified  with  God.  It  is  the  same  in  all 
ages — not  an  age  but  one  sees  a  Hebrew  in  it, 
out  under  his  lonely  heaven  standing  and  cry- 
ing ' '  God  and  I. "  It  is  the  one  great  spectacle 
of  the  Soul  this  little  world  has  seen.  Are  not 
the  mightiest  faces  that  come  to  us  flickering 
out  of  the  dark,  their  faces  ?  Who  can  look  at 
the  past  who  does  not  see — who  does  not  always 
see — some  mighty  Hebrew  in  it  singing  and 
struggling  with  God  ?  What  is  it — what  else 
could  it  possibly  be  but  the  Hebrew  soul,  like 
a  kind  of  pageantry  down  the  years  between  us 
and  God,  that  would  ever  have  made  us  guess — 
men  of  the  other  nations — that  a  God  belonged 
to  us,  or  that  a  God  could  belong  to  us  and  be  a 
God  at  all  ?  Have  not  all  the  other  races,  each 
in  their  turn  spawning  in  the  sun  and  lost  in 
the  night,  vanished  because  they  could  not  say 
"  I "  before  God  ?  The  nations  that  are  left, 
the  great  nations  of  the  modern  world,  are  but 
the  moral  passengers  of  the  Hebrews,  hangers- 
on  to  the  race  that  can  say  "  I  " — I  to  the  nth 
power, — the  race  that  has  dared  to  identify  itself 
with  God.  The  fact  that  the  Hebrew,  instead 
of  saying  God  and  I,  has  turned  it  around 


Ube  first 

person  a 

necessary 

Evil 


88 


SLost  Hrt  of  IReaofng 


Cbe  ffirst 
person  a 

Hcccssars 
Evil 


sometimes  and  said  I  and  God  is  neither  here 
nor  there  in  the  end.  It  is  because  the  Hebrew 
has  kept  to  the  main  point,  has  felt  related  to 
God  (the  main  point  a  God  cares  about),  that 
he  has  been  the  most  heroic  and  athletic  figure 
in  human  history — comes  nearer  to  the  God- 
size.  The  rest  of  the  nations  sitting  about 
and  wondering  in  the  dark,  have  called  this 
thing  in  the  Hebrew  "  religious  genius."  If 
one  were  to  try  to  sum  up  what  religious 
genius  is,  in  the  Hebrew,  or  to  account  for  the 
spiritual  and  material  supremacy  of  the  Hebrew 
in  history,  in  a  single  fact,  it  would  be  the  fact 
that  Moses,  their  first  great  leader,  when  he 
wanted  to  say  "  It  seems  to  me,"  said  "  The 
Lord  said  unto  Moses. ' ' 

The  Hebrews  may  have  written  a  book  that 
teaches,  of  all  others,  self-renunciation,  but  the 
way  they  taught  it  was  self-assertion.  The 
Bible  begins  with  a  meek  Moses  who  teaches 
by  saying  ' '  The  Lord  said  unto  Moses, ' '  and  it 
comes  to  its  climax  in  a  lowly  and  radiant  man 
who  dies  on  a  cross  to  say  ' '  I  and  the  Father 
are  one. ' '  The  man  Jesus  seems  to  have  called 
himself  God  because  he  had  a  divine  habit  of 
identifying  himself,  because  he  had  kept  on 
identifying  himself  with  others  until  the  first 
person  and  the  second  person  and  the  third 
person  were  as  one  to  him.  The  distinction 
of  the  New  Testament  is  that  it  is  the  one  book 
the  world  has  seen,  which  dispenses  with  pro- 
nouns. It  is  a  book  that  sums  up  pronouns 


o 


'*> 


Ube  Hrt  of 


Hnongmous 


and  numbers,  singular  and  plural,  first  person, 
second  and  third  person,  and  all,  in  the  one 
great  central  pronoun  of  the  universe.  The 
very  stars  speak  it — WH. 

We  is  a  developed  I. 

The  first  person  may  not  be  what  it  ought 
to  be  either  as  a  philosophy  or  an  experience, 
but  it  has  been  considered  good  enough  to 
make  Bibles  out  of,  and  it  does  seem  as  if  a 
good  word  might  occasionally  be  said  for  it  in 
modern  times,  as  if  some  one  ought  to  be  born 
before  long,  who  will  give  it  a  certain  stand- 
ing, a  certain  moral  respectability  once  more  in 
human  life  and  in  the  education  of  human  life. 

It  would  not  seem  to  be  an  overstatement 
that  the  best  possible  book  to  give  a  child  to 
read  at  any  time  is  the  one  that  makes  the 
most  cross  references  at  that  time  to  his  unde- 
veloped We. 


II 


Ebe  art  of  Beina  anonymous 

The  main  difficulty  in  getting  a  child  to  live 
in  the  whole  of  his  nature,  to  run  the  scale 
from  the  bottom  to  the  top,  from  "  I "  to  God, 
is  to  persuade  his  parents  and  teachers,  and 
the  people  who  crowd  around  him  to  educate 
him,  that  he  must  begin  at  the  bottom. 

The  Unpopularity  of  the  First  Person  Singu- 
lar in  current  education  naturally  follows  from 


Ube  Htt 


OLost  Hrt  ot  1Rea&in0 


•Cbe  Hrt 
of  JScfng 
Bnongs 

mous 


The  Disgrace  of  the  Imagination  in  it.  Our 
typical  school  is  not  satisfied  with  cutting  off  a 
boy's  imagination  about  the  outer  world  that 
lies  around  him.  It  amputates  his  imagination 
at  its  tap  root.  It  stops  a  boy's  imagination 
about  himself,  and  the  issues,  connections,  and 
possibilities  of  his  own  life. 

Inasmuch  as  the  education  of  a  child — his 
relation  to  books — must  be  conducted  either 
with  reference  to  evading  personality,  or  ac- 
cumulating it,  the  issue  is  one  that  must  be 
squarely  drawn  from  the  first.  Beginning  at 
the  bottom  is  found  by  society  at  large  to  be 
such  an  inconvenient  and  painstaking  process, 
that  the  children  who  are  allowed  to  lay  a 
foundation  for  personality — to  say  "  I  "  in  its 
disagreeable  stages — seem  to  be  confined,  for 
the  most  part,  to  either  one  or  the  other  of 
two  classes  —  the  Incurable  or  the  Callous. 
The  more  thorough  a  child's  nature  is,  the 
more  real  his  processes  are,  the  more  incurable 
he  is  bound  to  be — secretly  if  he  is  sensitive, 
and  offensively  if  he  is  callous.  In  either  case 
the  fact  is  the  same.  The  child  unconsciously 
acts  on  the  principle  that  self-assertion  is  self- 
preservation.  One  of  the  first  things  that  he  dis- 
covers is  that  self-preservation  is  the  last  thing 
polite  parents  desire  in  a  child.  If  he  is  to  be 
preserved,  they  will  preserve  him  themselves. 

The  conspiracy  begins  in  the  earliest  days. 
The  world  rolls  over  him.  The  home  and  the 
church  and  the  school  and  the  printed  book 


Ube  Hrt  of  JSeina  anonymous 


91 


roll  over  him.  The  story  is  the  same  in  all. 
Education — originally  conceived  as  drawing  a 
boy  out  —  becomes  a  huge,  elaborate,  over- 
whelming scheme  for  squeezing  him  in — for 
keeping  him  squeezed  in.  He  is  mobbed  on 
every  side.  At  school  the  teachers  crowd 
rourjd  him  and  say  "I"  for  him.  At  home 
his  parents  say  "  I  "  for  him.  At  church  the 
preacher  says  "  I  "  for  him.  And  when  he  re- 
treats into  the  privacy  of  his  own  soul  and  be- 
takes himself  to  a  book,  the  book  is  a  classic 
and  the  book  says  "I"  for  him.  When  he 
says  "  I "  himself  after  a  few  appropriate  years, 
he  says  it  in  disguised  quotation  marks.  If  he 
cannot  always  avoid  it — if  in  some  unguarded 
moment  he  is  particularly  alive  about  some- 
thing and  the  "I"  comes  out  on  it,  society 
expects  him  to  be  ashamed  of  it,  at  least  to 
avoid  the  appearance  of  not  being  ashamed  of 
it.  If  he  writes  he  is  desired  to  say  "we." 
Sometimes  he  shades  himself  off  into  "the 
present  writer. ' '  Sometimes  he  capitulates  in 
bare  initials. 

There  are  very  few  people  who  do  not  live 
in  quotation  marks  most  of  their  lives.  They 
would  die  in  them  and  go  to  heaven  in  them, 
if  they  could.  Nine  times  out  of  ten  it  is 
some  one  else's  heaven  they  want  to  go  to. 
The  number  of  people  who  would  know  what 
to  do  or  how  to  act  in  this  world  or  the  next, 
without  their  quotation  marks  on,  is  getting 
more  limited  every  year. 


Ube  Brt 
of  Hieing 


Xost  art  of  TReaoina 


•cbc  met 

of  JBeing 


And  yet  one  could  not  very  well  imagine  a 
world  more  prostrate  that  this  one  is,  before  a 
man  without  quotation  marks.  It  dotes  on 
personality.  It  spends  hundreds  of  years  at  a 
time  in  yearning  for  a  great  man.  But  it 
wants  its  great  man  finished.  It  is  never  will- 
ing to  pay  what  he  costs.  It  is  particularly 
unwilling  to  pay  what  he  costs  as  it  goes  along. 
The  great  man  as  a  boy  has  had  to  pay  for  him- 
self. The  bare  feat  of  keeping  out  of  quotation 
marks  has  cost  him  generally  more  than  he 
thought  he  was  worth — and  has  had  to  be  paid 
in  advance. 

There  is  a  certain  sense  in  which  it  is  true 
that  every  boy,  at  least  at  the  point  where  he 
is  especially  alive,  is  a  kind  of  great  man  in 
miniature — has  the  same  experience,  that  is, 
in  growing.  Many  a  boy  who  has  been  regu- 
larly represented  to  himself  as  a  monster,  a 
curiosity  of  selfishness  (and  who  has  believed 
it),  has  had  occasion  to  observe  when  he  grew  up 
that  some  of  his  selfishness  was  real  selfishness 
and  that  some  of  it  was  life.  The  things  he  was 
selfish  with,  he  finds  as  he  grows  older,  are  the 
things  he  has  been  making  a  man  out  of.  As 
a  boy,  however,  he  does  not  get  much  inkling 
of  this.  He  finds  he  is  being  brought  up  in  a 
world  where  boys  who  so  little  know  how  to 
play  with  their  things  that  they  give  them 
away,  are  pointed  out  to  him  as  generous,  and 
where  boys  who  are  so  bored  with  their  own 
minds  that  they  prefer  other  people's,  are  con- 


Brt  of  Being  Bnonsmous 


93 


sidered  modest.  If  he  knew  in  the  days  when 
models  are  being  pointed  out  to  him,  that  the 
time  would  soon  come  in  the  world  for  boys 
like  these  when  it  would  make  little  difference 
either  to  the  boys  themselves,  or  to  any  one 
else,  whether  they  were  generous  or  modest  or 
not,  it  would  make  his  education  happier.  In 
the  meantime,  in  his  disgrace,  he  does  not 
guess  what  a  good  example  to  models  he  is. 
Very  few  other  people  guess  it. 

The  general  truth,  that  when  a  man  has 
nothing  to  be  generous  with,  and  nothing  to 
be  modest  about,  even  his  virtues  are  super- 
fluous, is  realised  by  society  at  large  in  a 
pleasant  helpless  fashion  in  its  bearing  on  the 
man,  but  its  bearing  on  the  next  man,  on  edu- 
cation, on  the  problem  of  human  development, 
is  almost  totally  overlooked. 

The  youth  who  grasps  at  everything  in  sight 
to  have  his  experience  with  it,  who  cares  more 
for  the  thing  than  he  does  for  the  person  it 
comes  from,  and  more  for  his  experience  with 
the  thing  than  he  does  for  the  thing,  is  by  no 
means  an  inspiring  spectacle  while  this  process 
is  going  on,  and  he  is  naturally  in  perpetual 
disgrace,  but  in  proportion  as  they  are  wise, 
our  best  educators  are  aware  that  in  all  proba- 
bility this  same  youth  will  wield  more  spiritual 
power  in  the  world,  and  do  more  good  in  it, 
than  nine  or  ten  pleasantly  smoothed  and  ad- 
justable persons.  His  boy-faults  are  his  man- 
virtues  wrongside  out. 


Ube  Brt 
of  Cefng 
Hnong* 

incus 


94 


Xost  art  ot 


•Cbe  Hrt 
of  Xking 


There  are  very  few  lives  of  powerful  men  in 
modern  times  that  do  not  illustrate  this.  The 
men  who  do  not  believe  it — who  do  not  ap- 
prove of  illustrating  it,  have  illustrated  it  the 
most — devoted  their  lives  to  it.  It  would  be 
hard  to  find  a  man  of  any  special  importance 
in  modern  biography  who  has  not  been  in- 
debted to  the  sins  of  his  youth.  "It  is  the 
things  I  ought  not  to  have  done — see  page  93, 
179,  321,"  says  the  average  autobiography, 
' '  which  have  been  the  making  of  me. "  "  They 
were  all  good  things  for  me  to  do  (see  page 
526,  632,  720),  but  I  did  not  think  so  when  I 
did  them.  Neither  did  any  one  else."  "Study- 
ing Shakespeare  and  the  theatre  in  the  theo- 
logical seminary,  and  taking  walks  instead  of 
examinations  in  college,"  says  the  biography 
of  Beecher  (between  the  lines),  "  meant  definite 
moral  degeneration  to  me.  I  did  habitually 
what  I  could  not  justify  at  the  time,  either  to 
myself  or  to  others,  and  I  have  had  to  make 
up  since  for  all  the  moral  degeneration,  item 
by  item,  but  the  things  I  got  with  the  de- 
generation when  I  got  it — habits  of  imagina- 
tion, and  expression,  headway  of  personality 
— are  the  things  that  have  given  me  all  my 
inspirations  for  being  moral  since."  "What 
love  of  liberty  I  have,"  Wendell  Phillips 
seems  to  say,  "  I  got  from  loving  my  own." 
It  is  the  boy  who  loves  his  liberty  so  much 
that  he  insists  on  having  it  to  do  wrong  with, 
as  well  as  right,  who  in  the  long  run  gets  the 


Ube  art  of  Beino  Hnon^mous 


95 


most  right  done.  The  basis  of  character  is 
moral  experiment  and  almost  all  the  men  who 
have  discovered  different  or  beautiful  or  right 
habits  of  life  for  men,  have  discovered  them  by 
doing  wrong  long  enough.  (The  ice  is  thin  at 
this  point,  Gentle  Reader,  for  many  of  us, 
perhaps,  but  it  has  held  up  our  betters.)  The 
fact  of  the  matter  seems  to  be  that  a  man's 
conscience  in  this  world,  especially  if  it  is  an 
educated  one,  or  borrowed  from  his  parents, 
can  get  as  much  in  his  way  as  anything  else. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  The  Great  Spirit  pre- 
fers to  lead  a  man  by  his  conscience,  but  if  it 
cannot  be  done,  if  a  man's  conscience  has 
no  conveniences  for  being  led,  He  leads  him 
against  his  conscience.  The  doctrine  runs 
along  the  edge  of  a  precipice  (like  all  the  best 
ones),  but  if  there  is  one  gift  rather  than  an- 
other to  be  prayed  for  in  this  world  it  is  the 
ability  to  recognise  the  crucial  moment  that 
sometimes  comes  in  a  human  life  —  the  mo- 
ment when  The  Almighty  Himself  gets  a  man 
—  against  his  conscience  —  to  do  right.  It 
seems  to  be  the  way  that  some  consciences  are 
meant  to  grow,  by  trying  wrong  things  on  a 
little.  Thousands  of  inferior  people  can  be 
seen  every  day  stumbling  over  their  sins  to 
heaven,  while  the  rest  of  us  are  holding  back 
with  our  virtues.  It  has  been  intimated  from 
time  to  time  in  this  world  that  all  men  are  sin- 
ners. Inasmuch  as  things  are  arranged  so 
that  men  can  sin  in  doing  right  things,  and 


•CTbe  Brt 


96  Xost  Hrt  of  IReaoing 


E0otem  sin  in  doing  wrong  ones  both,  they  can  hardly 
socle  miss  it.  The  real  religion  of  every  age  seems 
to  have  looked  a  little  askance  at  perfection, 
even  at  purity,  has  gone  its  way  in  a  kind  of 
fine  straightforwardness,  has  spent  itself  in  an 
inspired  blundering,  in  progressive  noble  cul- 
minating moral  experiment. 

The  basis  for  a  great  character  seems  to  be 
the  capacity  for  intense  experience  with  the 
character  one  already  has.  So  far  as  most  of 
us  can  judge,  experience,  in  proportion  as  it 
has  been  conclusive  and  economical,  has  had  to 
be  (literally  or  with  one's  imagination)  in  the 
first  person.  The  world  has  never  really 
wanted  yet  (in  spite  of  appearances)  its  own 
way  with  a  man.  It  wants  the  man.  It  is 
what  he  is  that  concerns  it.  All  that  it  asks  of 
him,  and  all  that  he  has  to  give,  is  the  surplus 
of  himself.  The  trouble  with  our  modern 
fashion  of  substituting  the  second  person  or  the 
third  person  for  the  first,  in  a  man's  education, 
is  that  it  takes  his  capacity  for  intense  experi- 
ence of  himself,  his  chance  for  having  a  sur- 
plus of  himself,  entirely  away. 

Ill 

j£gotem  ant>  Society 

That  the  unpopularity  of  the  first  person 
singular  is  honestly  acquired  and  heartily  de- 
served, it  would  be  useless  to  deny.  Every  one 


ant>  Society 


97 


who  has  ever  had  a  first  person  singular  for  a 
longer  or  shorter  period  in  his  life  knows  that  it 
is  a  disagreeable  thing  and  that  every  one  else 
knows  it,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  at  least,  and 
about  nine  tenths  of  the  time  during  its  devel- 
opment. The  fundamental  question  does  not 
concern  itself  with  the  first  person  singular 
being  agreeable  or  disagreeable,  but  with  what 
to  do  with  it,  it  being  the  necessary  evil  that 
it  is. 

It  seems  to  be  a  reasonable  position  that 
what  should  be  objected  to  in  the  interests  of 
society,  is  not  egoism,  a  man's  being  interested 
in  himself,  but  the  lack  of  egoism,  a  man's 
having  a  self  that  does  not  include  others. 
The  trouble  would  seem  to  be — not  that  people 
use  their  own  private  special  monosyllable  over- 
much, but  that  there  is  not  enough  of  it,  that 
nine  times  out  of  ten,  when  they  write  "  I "  it 
should  be  written  "  i." 

In  the  face  of  the  political  objection,  the 
objection  of  the  State  to  the  first  person  singu- 
lar, the  egoist  defends  every  man's  reading  for 
himself  as  follows.  Any  book  that  is  allowed 
to  come  between  a  man  and  himself  is  doing 
him  and  all  who  know  him  a  public  injury. 
The  most  important  and  interesting  fact  about 
a  mar,  to  other  people,  is  his  attitude  toward 
himself.  It  determines  his  attitude  toward 
every  one  else.  The  most  fundamental  ques- 
tion of  every  State  is:  "  What  is  each  man's 
attitude  in  this  State  toward  himself?  What 


Egoism 

an& 
Society 


98 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaoing 


Egoism 

an& 
Society 


can  it  be  ?  "  A  man's  expectancy  toward  him- 
self, so  far  as  the  State  is  concerned,  is  the 
moral  centre  of  citizenship.  It  determines 
how  much  of  what  he  expects  he  will  expect 
of  himself,  and  how  much  he  will  expect  of 
others  and  how  much  of  books.  The  man 
who  expects  too  much  of  himself  develops 
into  the  headlong  and  dangerous  citizen  who 
threatens  society  with  his  strength  —  goes 
elbowing  about  in  it  —  insisting  upon  living 
other  people's  lives  for. them  as  well  as  his 
own.  The  man  who  expects  too  much  of 
others  threatens  society  with  weariness.  He 
is  always  expecting  other  people  to  do  his  liv- 
ing for  him.  The  man  who  expects  too  much 
of  books  lives  neither  in  himself  nor  in  any  one 
else.  The  career  of  the  Paper  Doll  is  open  to 
him.  History  seems  to  be  always  taking  turns 
with  these  three  temperaments  whether  in  art 
or  religion  or  public  affairs, — the  over-manned, 
the  under-manned,  and  the  over- read  —  the 
Tyrant,  the  Tramp,  and  the  Paper  Doll.  Be- 
tween the  man  who  keeps  things  in  his  own 
hands,  and  the  man  who  does  not  care  to,  and 
the  man  who  has  no  hands,  the  State  has  a 
hard  time.  Nothing  could  be  more  important 
to  the  existence  of  the  State  than  that  every 
man  in  it  shall  expect  just  enough  of  himself 
and  just  enough  of  others  and  just  enough  of 
the  world  of  books.  lyiving  is  adjusting  these 
worlds  to  one  another.  The  central  fact  about 
society  is  the  way  it  helps  a  man  with  himself. 


i  +  fl  =  Me  99 

The  society  which  cuts  a  man  off  from  himself 
cuts  him  still  farther  off  from  every  one  else. 
A  man's  reading  in  the  first  person — enough 
to  have  a  first  person — enough  to  be  identified 
with  himself,  is  one  of  the  defences  of  society. 

IV 


The  most  natural  course  for  a  human  being, 
who  is  going  to  identify  himself  with  other 
people,  is  to  begin  by  practising  on  himself. 
If  he  has  not  succeeded  in  identifying  himself 
with  himself,  he  makes  very  trying  work  of  the 
rest  of  us.  A  man  who  has  not  learned  to  say 
"  I  "  and  mean  something  very  real  by  it,  has 
it  not  in  his  power,  without  dulness  or  im- 
pertinence, to  say  "  you"  to  any  living  crea- 
ture. If  a  man  has  not  learned  to  say  "  you," 
if  he  has  not  taken  hold  of  himself,  inter- 
preted and  adjusted  himself  to  those  who  are 
face  to  face  with  him,  the  wider  and  more 
general  privilege  of  saying  "they,"  of  judg- 
ing any  part  of  mankind  or  any  temperament 
in  it,  should  be  kept  away  from  him.  It  is 
only  as  one  has  experienced  a  temperament, 
has  in  some  mood  of  one's  life  said  "  I"  in 
that  temperament,  that  one  has  the  outfit  for 
passing  an  opinion  on  it,  or  the  outfit  for  living 
with  it,  or  for  being  in  the  same  world  with  it. 

There  are  times,  it  must  be  confessed,  when 


OLost  Hrt  ot 


Christ's  command,  that  every  man  shall  love 
his  neighbour  as  himself,  seems  inconsiderate. 
There  are  some  of  us  who  cannot  help  feeling, 
when  we  see  a  man  coming  along  toward  us 
proposing  to  love  us  a  little  while  the  way  he 
loves  himself,  that  our  permission  might  have 
been  asked.  If  there  is  one  inconvenience 
rather  than  another  in  our  modern  Christian 
society,  it  is  the  general  unprotected  sense  one 
has  in  it,  the  number  of  people  there  are  about 
in  it  (let  loose  by  Sunday-school  teachers  and 
others)  who  are  allowed  to  go  around  loving 
other  people  the  way  they  love  themselves.  A 
codicil  or  at  least  an  explanatory  footnote  to 
the  Golden  Rule,  in  the  general  interest  of 
neighbours,  would  be  widely  appreciated.  How 
shall  a  man  dare  to  love  his  neighbour  as  him- 
self, until  he  loves  himself,  has  a  self  that  he 
really  loves,  a  self  he  can  really  love,  and 
loves  it?  There  is  no  more  sad  or  constant 
spectacle  that  this  modern  world  has  to  face 
than  the  spectacle  of  the  man  who  has  over- 
looked himself,  bustling  about  in  it,  trying  to 
give  honour  to  other  people, — the  man  who 
has  never  been  able  to  help  himself,  hurrying 
anxious  to  and  fro  as  if  he  could  help  some  one 
else. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  "Charity  begins  at 
home."  Everything  does.  The  one  person 
who  has  the  necessary  training  for  being  an 
altruist  is  the  alert  egoist  who  does  not  know 
he  is  an  altruist.  His  service  to  society  is  a 


101 


more  intense  and  comprehensive  selfishness. 
He  would  be  cutting  acquaintance  with  him- 
self not  to  render  it.  When  he  says  "  I  "  he 
means  ' '  we, ' '  and  the  second  and  third  persons 
are  grown  dim  to  him. 

An  absolutely  perfect  virtue  is  the  conveying 
of  a  man's  self,  with  a  truth,  to  others.  The 
virtues  that  do  not  convey  anything  are  cheap 
and  common  enough.  Favours  can  be  had 
almost  any  day  from  anybody,  if  one  is  not  too 
particular,  and  so  can  blank  staring  self-sacri- 
fices. One  feels  like  putting  up  a  sign  over 
the  door  of  one's  life,  with  some  people:  "Let 
no  man  do  me  a  favour  except  he  do  it  as  a 
self-indulgence."  Even  kindness  wears  out, 
shows  through,  becomes  impertinent,  if  it  is 
not  a  part  of  selfishness.  It  may  be  that  there 
are  certain  rudimentary  virtues  the  outer  form 
of  which  had  better  be  maintained  in  the  world, 
whether  they  can  be  maintained  spiritually — 
that  is,  thoroughly  and  egotistically,  or  not. 
If  my  enemy  who  lives  under  the  hill  will  con- 
tinue to  not-murder  me,  I  desire  him  to  con- 
tinue whether  he  enjoys  not-murdering  me  or 
not.  But  it  is  no  credit  to  him.  Except  in 
some  baldly  negative  fashion  as  this,  however, 
it  is  literally  true  that  a  man's  virtues  are  of 
little  account  to  others  except  as  they  are  of 
account  to  him,  and  except  he  enjoys  them  as 
much  as  his  vices.  The  first  really  important 
shock  that  comes  to  a  young  man's  religious 
sentiment  in  this  world  is  the  number  of 


102 


%ost  Hrt  of 


f+i=TOe  bored-looking  people  around,  doing  right. 
An  absolutely  substantial  and  perfect  love 
is  transfigured  selfishness.  It  is  no  mere 
playing  with  words  to  say  this,  nor  is  it 
substituting  a  comfortable  and  pleasant  doc- 
trine for  a  strenuous  altruism.  If  it  were  as 
light  and  graceful  an  undertaking  to  have 
enough  selfishness  to  go  around,  to  live  in  the 
whole  of  a  universe  like  this,  as  it  is  to  slip  out 
of  even  living  in  one's  self  in  it,  like  a  mere 
shadow  or  altruist,  egoism  were  superficial 
enough.  As  it  is,  egoism  being  terribly  or 
beautifully  alive,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  now  and 
always  has  been,  and  always  must  be  the  run- 
ning gear  of  the  spiritual  world — egoism  social- 
ised. The  first  person  is  what  the  second  and 
third  persons  are  made  out  of.  Altruism,  as 
opposed  to  egoism,  except  in  a  temporary 
sense,  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  Unless  a 
man  has  a  life  to  identify  other  lives  with,  a 
self  which  is  the  symbol  through  which  he 
loves  all  other  selves  and  all  other  experiences, 
he  is  selfish  in  the  true  sense. 

With  all  our  Galileos,  Agassizes,  and  Shake- 
speares,  the  universe  has  not  grown  in  its 
countless  centuries.  It  has  not  been  getting 
higher  and  wider  over  us  since  the  human 
race  began.  It  is  not  a  larger  universe.  It  is 
lived  in  by  larger  men,  more  all-absorbing,  all- 
identifying,  and  selfish  men.  It  is  a  universe 
in  which  a  human  being  is  duly  born,  given 
place  with  such  a  self  as  he  happens  to  have, 


i  +  U  =  Me 


and  he  is  expected  to  grow  up  to  it.  Barring 
a  certain  amount  of  wear  and  tear  and  a  few 
minor  rearrangements  on  the  outside,  it  is  the 
same  universe  that  it  was  in  the  beginning, 
and  is  now  and  always  will  be  quite  the  same 
universe,  whether  a  man  grows  up  to  it  or  not. 
The  larger  universe  is  not  one  that  comes  with 
the  telescope.  It  comes  with  the  larger  self, 
the  self  that  by  reaching  farther  and  farther 
in,  reaches  farther  and  farther  out.  It  is  as  if 
the  sky  were  a  splendour  that  grew  by  night 
out  of  his  own  heart,  the  tent  of  his  love  of 
God  spreading  its  roof  over  the  nature  of 
things.  The  greater  distance  knowledge 
reaches,  the  more  it  has  to  be  personal,  because 
it  has  to  be  spiritual. 

The  one  thing  that  it  is  necessary  to  do  in 
any  part  of  the  world  to  make  any  branch  of 
knowledge  or  deed  of  mercy,  a  living  and  eager 
thing,  is  to  get  men  to  see  how  direct  its  bear- 
ing is  upon  themselves.  The  man  who  does 
not  feel  concerned  when  the  Armenians  are 
massacred,  thousands  of  miles  away,  because 
there  is  a  sea  between,  is  not  a  different  man 
in  kind  from  the  man  who  does  feel  concerned. 
The  difference  is  one  of  degree.  It  is  a  matter 
of  area  in  living.  The  man  who  does  feel  con- 
cerned has  a  larger  self.  He  sees  further,  feels 
the  cry  as  the  cry  of  his  own  children.  He 
has  learned  the  oneness  and  is  touched  with 
the  closeness,  of  the  great  family  of  the  world. 


f+l=tde 


%ost  Hrt  of 


Ube  Huto= 

btograpbg 


HutobiograpbE  of  Beauty 


But  the  brunt  of  the  penalty  of  the  unpopu- 
larity of  the  first  person  singular  in  modern 
society  falls  upon  the  individual.  The  hard 
part  of  it,  for  a  man  who  has  not  the  daily 
habit  of  being  a  companion  to  himself,  is  his 
own  personal  private  sense  of  emptiness  —  of 
missing  things.  All  the  universe  gets  itself 
addressed  to  some  one  else  —  a  great  showy 
heartless  pantomime  it  rolls  over  him,  beckon- 
ing with  its  nights  and  days  and  winds  and 
faces—  always  beckoning,  but  to  some  one  else. 
All  that  seems  to  be  left  to  him  in  a  universe 
is  a  kind  of  keeping  up  appearances  in  it  —  a 
looking  as  if  he  lived  —  a  hurrying,  dishonest 
trying  to  forget.  He  dare  not  sit  down  and 
think.  He  spends  his  strength  in  racing  with 
himself  to  get  away  from  himself,  and  those 
greatest  days  of  all  in  human  life  —  the  days 
when  men  grow  old,  world-gentle,  and  still 
and  deep  before  their  God,  are  the  days  he 
dreads  the  most.  He  can  only  look  forward  to 
old  age  as  the  time  when  a  man  sits  down  with 
his  lie  at  last,  and  day  after  day  and  night 
after  night  faces  infinite  and  eternal  loneliness 
in  his  own  heart. 

It  is  the  man  who  cuts  acquaintance  with 
himself,  who  dares  to  be  lonely  with  himself, 
who  dares  the  supreme  daring  in  this  world. 


Hutobiograpbg  ot 


He  and  his  loneliness  are  hermetically  sealed 
up  together  in  infinite  Time,  infinite  Space, — 
not  a  great  man  of  all  that  have  been,  not  a 
star  or  flower,  not  even  a  great  book  that  can 
get  at  him. 

It  is  the  nature  of  a  great  book  that  in  pro- 
portion as  it  is  beautiful  it  makes  itself  helpless 
before  a  human  soul.  Like  music  or  poetry  or 
painting  it  lays  itself  radiant  and  open  before 
all  that  lies  before  it  —  to  everything  or  to 
nothing,  whatever  it  may  be.  It  makes  the 
direct  appeal.  Before  the  days  and  years  of  a 
man's  life  it  stands.  "Is  not  this  so  ?  "  it  says. 
It  never  says  less  than  this.  It  does  not  know 
how  to  say  more. 

A  bare  and  trivial  book  stops  with  what  it 
says  itself.  A  great  book  depends  now  and 
forever  upon  what  it  makes  a  man  say  back, 
and  if  he  does  not  say  anything,  if  he  does  not 
bring  anything  to  it  to  say,  nothing  out  of  his 
own  observation,  passion,  experience,  to  be 
called  out  by  the  passing  words  upon  the  page, 
the  most  living  book,  in  its  board  and  paper 
prison,  is  a  dead  and  helpless  thing  before  a 
Dead  Soul.  The  helplessness  of  the  Dead 
Soul  lies  upon  it. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  more  important  distinc- 
tion between  a  great  book  and  a  little  book 
than  this  —  that  the  great  book  is  always  a 
listener  before  a  human  life,  and  the  little  book 
takes  nothing  for  granted  of  a  reader.  It  does 
not  expect  anything  of  him.  The  littler  it  is, 


Ube  Buto= 
biography 


io6 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaofna 


Cbc  Sutos 
btograpbg 
of  33cautY> 


the  less  it  expects  and  the  more  it  explains. 
Nothing  that  is  really  great  and  living  ex- 
plains. Living  is  enough.  If  greatness  does 
not  explain  by  being  great,  nothing  smaller 
can  explain  it.  God  never  explains.  He 
merely  appeals  to  every  man's  first  person 
singular.  Religion  is  not  what  He  has  told  to 
men.  It  is  what  He  has  made  men  wonder 
about  until  they  have  been  determined  to  find 
out.  The  stars  have  never  been  published 
with  footnotes.  The  sun,  with  its  huge,  soft 
shining  on  people,  kept  on  with  the  shining 
even  when  the  people  thought  it  was  doing  so 
trivial  and  undignified  and  provincial  a  thing 
as  to  spend  its  whole  time  going  around  them, 
and  around  their  little  earth,  that  they  might 
have  light  on  it  perchance,  and  be  kept  warm. 
The  moon  has  never  gone  out  of  its  way  to 
prove  that  it  is  not  made  of  green  cheese. 
And  this  present  planet  we  are  allowed  the  use 
of  from  year  to  year,  which  was  so  little  ob- 
served for  thousands  of  generations  that  all  the 
people  011  it  supposed  it  was  flat,  made  no  an- 
swer through  the  centuries.  It  kept  on  burying 
them  one  by  one,  and  waited — like  a  work  of 
genius  or  a  masterpiece. 

In  proportion  as  a  thing  is  beautiful,  whether 
of  man  or  God,  it  has  this  heroic  helplessness 
about  it  with  the  passing  soul  or  generation  of 
souls.  If  people  are  foolish,  it  can  but  appeal 
from  one  dear,  pitiful  fool  to  another  until 
enough  of  us  have  died  to  make  it  time  for  a 


TTbe  HutobioQrapbg  ot 


107 


wise  man  again.  History  is  a  series  of  crises 
like  this,  in  which  once  in  so  often  men  who  say 
"I"  have  crossed  the  lives  of  mortals— have 
puzzled  the  world  enough  to  be  remembered  in 
it,  like  Socrates,  or  been  abused  by  it  enough 
to  make  it  love  them  forever,  like  Christ. 

The  greatest  revelation  of  history  is  the  pa- 
tience of  the  beauty  in  it,  and  truth  can  always 
be  known  by  the  fact  that  it  is  the  only  thing 
in  the  wide  world  that  can  afford  to  wait.  A 
true  book  does  not  go  about  advertising  itself, 
huckstering  for  souls,  arranging  its  greatness 
small  enough.  It  waits.  Sometimes  for  twenty 
years  it  waits  for  us,  sometimes  for  forty,  some- 
times sixty,  and  then  when  the  time  is  fulfilled 
and  we  come  at  length  and  lay  before  it  the 
burden  of  the  blind  and  blundering  years  we 
have  tried  to  live,  it  does  little  with  us,  after 
all,  but  to  bring  these  same  years  singing  and 
crying  and  struggling  back  to  us,  that  through 
their  shadowy  doors  we  may  enter  at  last  the 
confessional  of  the  human  heart,  and  cry  out 
there,  or  stammer  or  whisper  or  sing  there, 
the  prophecy  of  our  own  lives.  Dead  words 
out  of  dead  dictionaries  the  book  brings  to  us. 
It  is  a  great  book  because  it  is  a  listening  book, 
because  it  makes  the  unspoken  to  speak  and 
the  dead  to  live  in  it.  To  the  vanished  pen 
and  the  yellowed  paper  of  the  man  who  writes 
to  us,  thy  soul  and  mine,  Gentle  Reader,  shall 
call  back,  "  This  is  the  truth." 

If  a  book  has  force  in  it,  whatever  its  literary 


r  be  Buto» 
biograpbg 
of  JBeautg 


io8 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


Ube  Butoa 
biograpb^ 
of  £eaut£ 


form  may  be,  or  however  disguised,  it  is  biog- 
raphy appealing  to  biography.  If  a  book  has 
great  force  in  it,  it  is  autobiography  appealing 
to  autobiography.  The  great  book  is  always 
a  confession  —  a  moral  adventure  with  its 
reader,  an  incredible  confidence. 


The  Fourth  Interference: 
The  Habit  of  Not  Let- 
ting One's  Self  Go 


Country  Bop  in  literature 

"T    ET  not  any  Parliament  Member,"  says 
L/     Carlyle,   ' '  ask  of  the   Present  Editor 
'  What  is  to  be  done  ? '     Editors  are  not  here 
to  say,  'How.'  " 

"  Which  is  both  ungracious  and  tantalisingly 
elusive,"  suggests  a  Professor  of  Literature, 
who  has  been  recently  criticising  the  Nine- 
teenth Century. 

This  criticism,  as  a  part  of  an  estimate  of 
Thomas  Carlyle,  is  not  only  a  criticism  on 
itself  and  an  autobiography  besides,  but  it 
sums  up,  in  a  more  or  less  characteristic  fashion 


109 


Ube 

Country 


literature 


no 


OLost  Hrt  of 


Countrv 

*os  in 

literature 


perhaps,  what  might  be  called  the  ultra-aca- 
demic attitude  in  reading.  The  ultra-academic 
attitude  may  be  defined  as  the  attitude  of  sit- 
ting down  and  being  told  things,  and  of  ex- 
pecting all  other  persons  to  sit  down  and  be 
told  things,  and  of  judging  all  authors,  prin- 
ciples, men,  and  methods  accordingly. 

If  the  universe  were  what  in  most  libraries 
and  clubs  to-day  it  is  made  to  seem,  a  kind 
of  infinite  Institution  of  Learning,  a  Lecture 
Room  on  a  larger  scale,  and  if  all  the  men  in 
it,  instead  of  doing  and  singing  in  it,  had 
spent  their  days  in  delivering  lectures  to  it, 
there  would  be  every  reason,  in  a  universe 
arranged  for  lectures,  why  we  should  exact  of 
those  who  give  them,  that  they  should  make 
the  truth  plain  to  us  —  so  plain  that  there 
would  be  nothing  left  for  us  to  do,  with  truth, 
but  to  read  it  in  the  printed  book,  and  then 
analyse  the  best  analysis  of  it — and  die. 

It  seems  to  be  quite  generally  true  of  those 
who  have  been  the  great  masters  of  literature, 
however,  that  in  proportion  as  they  have  been 
great  they  have  proved  to  be  as  ungracious 
and  as  tantalisingly  elusive  as  the  universe 
itself.  They  have  refused,  without  exception, 
to  bear  down  on  the  word  ' '  how. ' '  They  have 
almost  never  told  men  what  to  do,  and  have 
confined  themselves  to  saying  something  that 
would  make  them  do  it,  and  make  them  find 
a  way  to  do  it.  This  something  that  they 
have  said,  like  the  something  that  they  have 


ZTbe  Countrg  Bog  in  ^Literature 


lived,  has  come  to  them  they  know  not  how, 
and  it  has  gone  from  them  they  know  not  how, 
sometimes  not  even  when.  It  has  been  incom- 
municable, incalculable,  infinite,  the  subcon- 
scious self  of  each  of  them,  the  voice  beneath 
the  voice,  calling  down  the  corridors  of  the 
world. 

If  a  boy  from  the  country  were  to  stand  in  a 
city  street  before  the  window  of  a  shop,  gazing 
into  it  with  open  mouth,  he  would  do  more  in 
five  or  six  minutes  to  measure  the  power  and 
calibre  of  the  passing  men  and  women  than 
almost  any  device  that  could  be  arranged. 
Ninety-five  out  of  a  hundred  of  them,  prob- 
ably, would  smile  a  superior  smile  at  him  and 
hurry  on.  Out  of  the  remaining  five,  four 
would  look  again  and  pity  him.  One,  per- 
haps, would  honour  and  envy  him. 

The  boy  who,  in  a  day  like  the  present  one, 
is  still  vital  enough  to  forget  how  he  looks  in 
enjoying  something,  is  not  only  a  rare  and  re- 
freshing spectacle,  but  he  is  master  of  the  most 
important  intellectual  and  moral  superiority 
a  boy  can  be  master  of,  and  if,  in  spite  of 
teachers  and  surroundings,  he  can  keep  this 
superiority  long  enough,  or  until  he  comes  to 
be  a  man,  he  shall  be  the  kind  of  man  whose 
very  faults  shall  be  remembered  better  and 
cherished  more  by  a  doting  world  than  the 
virtues  of  the  rest  of  us. 

The  most  important  fact — perhaps  the  only 
important  fact  —  about  James  Boswell  —  the 


Ubc 

Country 

3BO£  in 

literature 


112 


%ost  Hrt  of  IReaoing 


Ube 
Country 


literature 


country  boy  of  literature — is  that,  whatever 
may  have  been  his  limitations,  he  had  the 
most  important  gift  that  life  can  give  to  a  man 
— the  gift  of  forgetting  himself  in  it.  In  the 
Fleet  Street  of  letters,  smiling  at  him  and  jeer- 
ing by  him,  who  does  not  always  see  James 
Boswell,  completely  lost  to  the  street,  gaping 
at  the  soul  of  Samuel  Johnson  as  if  it  were  the 
show  window  of  the  world,  as  if  to  be  allowed 
to  look  at  a  soul  like  this  were  almost  to  have 
a  soul  one's  self? 

Boswell 's  Life  of  Johnson  is  a  classic  because 
James  Boswell  had  the  classic  power  in  him  of 
unconsciousness.  To  book-labourers,  college 
employees,  analysis-hands  of  whatever  kind, 
his  book  is  a  standing  notice  that  the  pre- 
rogative of  being  immortal  is  granted  by  men, 
even  to  a  fool,  if  he  has  the  grace  not  to  know 
it.  For  that  matter,  even  if  the  fool  knows  he 
is  a  fool,  if  he  cares  more  about  his  subject  than 
he  cares  about  not  letting  any  one  else  know  it, 
he  is  never  forgotten.  The  world  cannot  afford 
to  leave  such  a  fool  out.  Is  it  not  a  world  in 
which  there  is  not  a  man  living  of  us  who  does 
not  cherish  in  his  heart  a  little  secret  like  this  of 
his  own  ?  We  are  bound  to  admit  that  the  main 
difference  between  James  Boswell  and  the  rest, 
consists  in  the  fact  that  James  Boswell  found 
something  in  the  world  so  much  more  worth  liv- 
ing for,  than  not  letting  the  common  secret  out, 
that  he  lived  for  it,  and  like  all  the  other  great 
naives  he  will  never  get  over  living  for  it. 


Country 


in  Xlterature 


Even  allowing  that  Boswell's  consistent  and 
unfailing  motive  in  cultivating  Samuel  Johnson 
was  vanity,  this  very  vanity  of  Boswell's  has 
more  genius  in  it  than  Johnson's  vocabulary, 
and  the  important  and  inspiring  fact  remains, 
that  James  Boswell,  a  flagrantly  commonplace 
man  in  every  single  respect,  by  the  law  of  letting 
himself  go,  has  taken  his  stand  forever  in  Eng- 
lish literature,  as  the  one  commonplace  man  in 
it  who  has  produced  a  work  of  genius.  The 
main  quality  of  a  man  of  genius,  his  power  of 
sacrificing  everything  to  his  main  purpose,  be- 
longed to  him.  He  was  not  only  willing  to 
seem  the  kind  of  fool  he  was,  but  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  seem  several  kinds  that  he  was 
not,  to  fulfil  his  main  purpose.  That  Samuel 
Johnson  might  be  given  the  ponderous  and 
gigantic  and  looming  look  that  a  Samuel  John- 
son ought  to  have,  Boswell  painted  himself  into 
his  picture  with  more  relentlessness  than  any 
other  author  that  can  be  called  to  mind,  ex- 
cept three  or  four  similarly  commonplace  and 
similarly  inspired  and  self-forgetful  persons  in 
the  New  Testament.  There  has  never  been 
any  other  biography  in  England  with  the 
single  exception  of  Pepys,  in  which  the  author 
has  so  completely  lost  himself  in  his  subject. 
If  the  author  of  Johnson's  life  had  written  his 
book  with  the  inspiration  of  not  being  laughed 
at  (which  is  the  inspiration  that  nine  out  of 
ten  who  love  to  laugh  are  likely  to  write  with), 
James  Boswell  would  never  have  been  heard 


Ube 

Country 

£ot>  in 

literature 


%ost  Hrt  of  IReaolna 


ttbe 
Country 


literature 


of,  and  the  burly  figure  of  Samuel  Johnson 
would  be  a  blur  behind  a  dictionary. 

It  may  be  set  down  as  one  of  the  necessary 
principles  of  the  reading  habit  that  no  true  and 
vital  reading  is  possible  except  as  the  reader 
possesses  and  employs  the  gift  of  letting  him- 
self go.  It  is  a  gift  that  William  Shakespeare 
and  James  Boswell  and  Elijah  and  Charles 
L,amb  and  a  great  many  other  happy  but  un- 
important people  have  had  in  common.  No 
man  of  genius — a  man  who  puts  his  best  and 
his  most  unconscious  self  into  his  utterance — 
can  be  read  or  listened  to  or  interpreted  for 
one  moment  without  it.  Except  from  those 
who  bring  to  him  the  greeting  of  their  own 
unconscious  selves,  he  hides  himself.  He 
gives  himself  only  to  those  with  whom  uncon- 
sciousness is  a  daily  habit,  with  whom  the  joy 
of  letting  one's  self  go  is  one  of  the  great  re- 
sources of  life.  This  joy  is  back  of  every  great 
act  and  every  deep  appreciation  in  the  world, 
and  it  is  the  charm  and  delight  of  the  smaller 
ones.  On  its  higher  levels,  it  is  called  genius 
and  inspiration.  In  religion  it  is  called  faith. 
It  is  the  primal  energy  both  of  art  and  religion. 

Probably  only  the  man  who  has  very  little 
would  be  able  to  tell  what  faith  is,  as  a  basis 
of  art  or  religion,  but  we  have  learned  some 
things  that  it  is  not.  We  know  that  faith  is 
not  a  dead-lift  of  the  brain,  a  supreme  effort 
either  for  God  or  for  ourselves.  It  is  the  soul 
giving  itself  up,  finding  itself,  feeling  itself 


ZTbe  Subconscious  Self 


drawn  to  its  own,  into  infinite  space,  face  to 
face  with  strength.  It  is  the  supreme  swing- 
ing-free of  the  spirit,  the  becoming  a  part  of 
the  running-gear  of  things.  Faith  is  not  an 
act  of  the  imagination — to  the  man  who  knows 
it.  It  is  infinite  fact,  the  infinite  crowding  of 
facts,  the  drawing  of  the  man-self  upward  and 
outward,  where  he  is  surrounded  with  the  in- 
finite man-self.  Perhaps  a  man  can  make  him- 
self not  believe.  He  can  not  make  himself 
believe.  He  can  only  believe  by  letting  him- 
self go,  by  trusting  the  force  of  gravity  and 
the  law  of  space  around  him.  Faith  is  the 
universe  flowing  silently,  implacably,  through 
his  soul.  He  has  given  himself  up  to  it.  In 
the  tiniest,  noisiest  noon  his  spirit  is  flooded 
with  the  stars.  He  is  let  out  to  the  boundaries 
of  heaven  and  the  night-sky  bears  him  up  in 
the  heat  of  the  day. 

In  the  presence  of  a  great  work  of  art — a 
work  of  inspiration  or  faith,  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  appreciation,  without  letting  one's 
self  go. 

II 

Gbe  Subconscious  Self 

The  criticism  of  Carlyle's  remark,  "  Editors 
are  not  here  to  say  '  How,'  " — that  it  is  "  un- 
gracious and  tantalisingly  elusive,"  is  a  fair 
illustration  of  the  mood  to  which  the  habit  of 


Ube  Subs 

conscious 

Self 


n6 


%ost  Hrt  of 


Ube  Subs 

conscious 

Self 


analysis  leads  its  victims.  The  explainer  can- 
not let  himself  go.  The  puttering  love  of  ex- 
plaining and  the  need  of  explaining  dog  his 
soul  at  every  turn  of  thought  or  thought  of 
having  a  thought.  He  not  only  puts  a  micro- 
scope to  his  eyes  to  know  with,  but  his  eyes 
have  ingrown  microscopes.  The  microscope 
has  become  a  part  of  his  eyes.  He  cannot  see 
anything  without  putting  it  on  a  slide,  and 
when  his  microscope  will  not  focus  it,  and  it 
cannot  be  reduced  and  explained,  he  explains 
that  it  is  not  there. 

The  man  of  genius,  on  the  other  hand,  with 
whom  truth  is  an  experience  instead  of  a  speci- 
men, has  learned  that  the  probabilities  are  that 
the  more  impossible  it  is  to  explain  a  truth 
the  more  truth  there  is  in  it.  In  so  far  as  the 
truth  is  an  experience  to  him,  he  is  not  looking 
for  slides.  He  will  not  mount  it  as  a  specimen 
and  he  is  not  interested  in  seeing  it  explained 
or  focussed.  He  lives  with  it  in  his  own  heart 
in  so  far  as  he  possesses  it,  and  he  looks  at  it 
with  a  telescope  for  that  greater  part  which  he 
cannot  possess.  The  microscope  is  perpetually 
mislaid.  He  has  the  experience  itself  and  the 
one  thing  he  wants  to  do  with  it  is  to  convey 
it  to  others.  He  does  this  by  giving  himself 
up  to  it.  The  truth  having  become  a  part  of 
him  by  his  thus  giving  himself  up,  it  becomes 
a  part  of  his  reader,  by  his  reader's  giving 
himself  up. 

Reading  a  work  of  genius  is  one  man's  un- 


Subconscious  Self 


117 


consciousness  greeting  another  man's.  No 
author  of  the  higher  class  can  possibly  be  read 
without  this  mutual  exchange  of  unconscious- 
ness. He  cannot  be  explained.  He  cannot 
explain  himself.  And  he  cannot  be  enjoyed, 
appreciated,  or  criticised  by  those  who  expect 
him  to.  Spiritual  things  are  spiritually  dis- 
cerned, that  is,  experienced  things  are  dis- 
cerned by  experience.  They  are  ' '  ungracious 
and  tantalisingly  elusive." 

When  the  man  who  has  a  little  talent  tells  a 
truth  he  tells  the  truth  so  ill  that  he  is  obliged 
to  tell  how  to  do  it.  The  artist,  on  the  other 
hand,  having  given  himself  up  to  the  truth, 
almost  always  tells  it  as  if  he  were  listening  to 
it,  as  if  he  were  being  borne  up  by  it,  as  by 
some  great  delight,  even  while  he  speaks  to  us. 
It  is  the  power  of  the  artist's  truth  when  he 
writes  like  this  that  it  shall  haunt  his  reader 
as  it  has  haunted  him.  He  lives  with  it  and 
is  haunted  by  it  day  after  day  whether  he 
wants  to  be  or  not,  and  when  a  human  being 
is  obliged  to  live  with  a  burning  truth  inside 
of  him  every  day  of  his  life,  he  will  find  a  how 
for  it,  he  will  find  some  way  of  saying  it,  of 
getting  it  outside  of  him,  of  doing  it,  if  only 
for  the  common  and  obvious  reason  that  it 
burns  the  heart  out  of  a  man  who  does  not. 
If  the  truth  is  really  in  a  man — a  truth  to  be 
done, — he  finds  out  how  to  do  it  as  a  matter  of 
self-preservation. 

The  average  man  no  doubt  will  continue 


Cbe  Sub. 

conscious 

Self 


n8 


%ost  Bet  of  TReaMng 


Tfbe  Sub« 

conscious 

Self 


now  as  always  to  consider  Carlyle's  "  Editors 
are  not  here  to  say  '  How '  ' '  ungracious  and 
tantalisingly  elusive.  He  demands  of  every 
writer  not  only  that  he  shall  write  the  truth 
for  every  man  but  that  he  shall — practically — 
read  it  for  him — that  is,  tell  him  how  to  read 
it — the  best  part  of  reading  it.  It  is  by  this 
explaining  the  truth  too  much,  by  making  it 
small  enough  for  small  people  that  so  many  lies 
have  been  made  out  of  it.  The  gist  of  the 
matter  seems  to  be  that  if  the  spirit  of  the  truth 
does  not  inspire  a  man  to  some  more  eager  way 
of  finding  out  how  to  do  a  truth  than  asking 
some  other  man  how  to  do  it,  it  must  be  some 
other  spirit.  The  way  out  for  the  explotterat- 
ing  or  weak  man  does  not  consist  in  the  sci- 
entist's or  the  commentator's  how,  or  the 
artist's  how,  or  in  any  other  strain  of  helping 
the  ground  to  hold  one  up.  It  consists  in  the 
power  of  letting  one's  self  go. 

To  say  nothing  of  appreciation  of  power, 
criticisim  of  power  is  impossible,  without  let- 
ting one's  self  go.  Criticism  which  is  not  the 
faithful  remembering  and  reporting  of  an  un- 
conscious mood  is  not  worthy  of  being  called 
criticism  at  all.  A  critic  cannot  find  even  the 
faults  of  a  book  who  does  not  let  himself  go  in 
it,  and  there  is  not  a  man  living  who  can  ex- 
pect to  write  a  criticism  of  a  book  until  he  has 
given  himself  a  chance  to  have  an  experience 
with  it,  to  write  his  criticism  with.  The  larger 
part  of  the  professional  criticism  of  the  ages 


Ube  Subconscious  Self 


that  are  past  has  proved  worthless  to  us,  be- 
cause the  typical  professional  critic  has  gen-  ""g^"8 
erally  been  a  man  who  professes  not  to  let 
himself  go  and  who  is  proud  of  it.  If  it  were 
not  for  the  occasional  possibility  of  his  being 
stunned  by  a  book — made  unconscious  by  it, — 
the  professional  critic  of  the  lesser  sort  would 
never  say  anything  of  interest  to  us  at  all,  and 
even  if  he  did,  being  a  maimed  and  defective 
conscious  person,  the  evidence  that  he  was 
stunned  is  likely  to  be  of  more  significance 
than  anything  he  may  say  about  the  book  that 
stunned  him,  or  about  the  way  he  felt  when  he 
was  being  stunned.  Having  had  very  little 
practice  in  being  unconscious,  the  bare  fact  is 
all  that  he  can  remember  about  it.  The  un- 
consciousness of  a  person  who  has  long  lost  the 
habit  of  unconsciousness  is  apt  to  be  a  kind 
of  groping  stupor  or  deadness  at  its  best,  and 
not,  as  with  the  artist,  a  state  of  being,  a  way 
of  being  incalculably  alive,  and  of  letting  in 
infinite  life.  It  is  a  small  joy  that  is  not  un- 
conscious. The  man  who  knows  he  is  reading 
when  he  has  a  book  in  his  hands,  does  not 
know  very  much  about  books. 

People  who  always  know  what  time  it  is,  who 
always  know  exactly  where  they  are,  and  ex- 
actly how  they  look,  have  it  not  in  their  power 
to  read  a  great  book.  The  book  that  comes  to 
the  reader  as  a  great  book  is  always  one  that 
shares  with  him  the  infinite  and  the  eternal  in 
himself. 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaoina 


Cbc 
Organic 
principle 

of  Ins 
spiration 


There  is  a  time  to  know  what  time  it  is,  and 
there  is  a  time  not  to,  and  there  are  many 
places  small  enough  to  know  where  they  are. 
The  book  that  knows  what  time  it  is,  in  every 
sentence,  will  always  be  read  by  the  clock,  but 
the  great  book,  the  book  with  infinite  vistas  in 
it,  shall  not  be  read  by  men  with  a  rim  of  time 
around  it.  The  place  of  it  is  unmeasured,  and 
there  is  no  sound  that  men  can  make  which 
shall  tick  in  that  place. 

Ill 


©rganic  principle  of  Unspi 
ration 


letting  one's  self  go  is  but  a  half-principle, 
however,  to  do  one's  reading  with.  The  other 
half  consists  in  getting  one's  self  together 
again.  In  proportion  as  we  truly  appreciate 
what  we  read,  we  find  ourselves  playing  at  be- 
ing Boswell  to  a  book  and  being  Johnson  to  it 
by  turns.  The  vital  reader  lets  himself  go  and 
collects  himself  as  the  work  before  him  de- 
mands. There  are  some  books,  where  it  is 
necessary  to  let  one's  self  go  from  beginning 
to  end.  There  are  others  where  a  man  may 
sit  as  he  sits  at  a  play,  being  himself  between 
acts,  or  at  proper  intervals  when  the  author  lets 
down  the  curtain,  and  being  translated  the  rest 
of  the  time. 


Ube  ©roanic  principle  of  inspiration 


121 


Our  richest  moods  are  those  in  which,  as  we 
look  back  upon  them,  we  seem  to  have  been 
impressing,  impressionable,  creative,  and  re- 
ceptive at  the  same  time.  The  alternating 
currents  of  these  moods  are  so  swift  that  they 
seem  simultaneous,  and  the  immeasurable 
swiftness  with  which  they  pass  from  one  to  the 
other  is  the  soul's  instinctive  method  of  kin- 
dling itself — the  very  act  of  inspiration.  Some- 
times the  subconscious  self  has  it  all  its  own 
way  with  us  except  for  a  corner  of  dim,  burn- 
ing consciousness  keeping  guard.  Sometimes 
the  conscious  has  it  all  its  own  way  with  us 
and  the  subconscious  self  is  crowded  to  the 
horizon's  edge,  like  Northern  Lights  still  play- 
ing in  the  distance ;  but  the  result  is  the  same 
— the  dim  presence  of  one  of  these  moods  in 
the  other,  when  one's  power  is  least  effective, 
and  the  gradual  alternating  of  the  currents 
of  the  moods  as  power  grows  more  effective. 
In  the  higher  states  of  power,  the  moods 
are  seen  alternating  with  increasing  heat  and 
swiftness  until  in  the  highest  state  of  power 
of  all,  they  are  seen  in  their  mutual  glow  and 
splendour,  working  as  one  mood,  creating 
miracles. 

The  orator  and  the  listener,  the  writer  and 
the  reader,  in  proportion  as  they  become  alive 
to  one  another,  come  into  the  same  spirit — the 
spirit  of  mutual  listening  and  utterance.  At 
the  very  best,  and  in  the  most  inspired  mood, 
the  reader  reads  as  if  he  were  a  reader  and 


Ube 
Organic 
principle 

of  Un= 
epiratton 


122 


Xost  Brt  of  TReaoins 


Organic 
principle 


spiration 


writer  both,  and  the  writer  writes  as  if  he  were 
a  writer  and  reader  both. 

While  it  is  necessary  in  the  use  and  develop- 
ment of  power,  that  all  varieties  and  com- 
binations of  these  moods  should  be  familiar 
experiences  with  the  artist  and  with  the  reader 
of  the  artist,  it  remains  as  the  climax  and 
ideal  of  all  energy  and  beauty  in  the  human 
soul  that  these  moods  shall  be  found  alternat- 
ing very  swiftly  —  to  all  appearances  together. 
The  artist's  command  of  this  alternating  cur- 
rent, the  swiftness  with  which  he  modulates 
these  moods  into  one  another,  is  the  measure 
of  his  power.  The  violinist  who  plays  best  is 
the  one  who  sings  the  most  things  together  in 
his  playing.  He  listens  to  his  own  bow,  to 
the  heart  of  his  audience,  and  to  the  soul  of 
the  composer  all  at  once.  His  instrument 
sings  a  singing  that  blends  them  together. 
The  effect  of  their  being  together  is  called  art. 
The  effect  of  their  being  together  is  produced 
by  the  fact  that  they  are  together,  that  they 
are  born  and  living  and  dying  together  in  the 
man  himself  while  the  strings  are  singing  to 
us.  They  are  the  spirit  within  the  strings. 
His  letting  himself  go  to  them,  his  gathering 
himself  out  of  them,  his  power  to  receive  and 
create  at  once,  is  the  secret  of  the  effect  he 
produces.  The  power  to  be  receptive  and 
creative  by  turns  is  only  obtained  by  constant 
and  daily  practice,  and  when  the  modulating 
of  one  of  these  moods  into  the  other  becomes  a 


ZIbe  ©raanic  jpriuciple  of  flnsptration 


123 


swift  and  unconscious  habit  of  life,  what  is 
called  "  temperament "  in  an  artist  is  attained 
at  last  and  inspiration  is  a  daily  occurrence. 
It  is  as  hard  for  such  a  man  to  keep  from  being 
inspired  as  it  is  for  the  rest  of  us  to  make  our- 
selves inspired.  He  has  to  go  out  of  his  way 
to  avoid  inspiration. 

In  proportion  as  this  principle  is  recognised 
and  allowed  free  play  in  the  habits  that  obtain 
amongst  men  who  know  books,  their  habits 
will  be  inspired  habits.  Books  will  be  read 
and  lived  in  the  same  breath,  and  books  that 
have  been  lived  will  be  written. 

The  most  serious  menace  in  the  present 
epidemic  of  analysis  in  our  colleges  is  not  that 
it  is  teaching  men  to  analyse  masterpieces 
until  they  are  dead  to  them,  but  that  it  is 
teaching  men  to  analyse  their  own  lives  until 
they  are  dead  to  themselves.  When  the  pro- 
cess of  education  is  such  that  it  narrows  the 
area  of  unconscious  thinking  and  feeling  in  a 
man's  life,  it  cuts  him  off  from  his  kinship 
with  the  gods,  from  his  habit  of  being  uncon- 
scious enough  of  what  he  has  to  enter  into  the 
joy  of  what  he  has  not. 

The  best  that  can  be  said  of  such  an  education 
is  that  it  is  a  patient,  painstaking,  laborious 
training  in  locking  one's  self  up.  It  dooms  a 
man  to  himself,  the  smallest  part  of  himself, 
and  walls  him  out  of  the  universe.  He  comes 
to  its  doorways  one  by  one.  The  shining  of 
them  falls  at  first  on  him,  as  it  falls  on  all  of 


Ube 
Organic 

principle 
of  1n« 

epiratton 


I24 


Xost  art  ot 


Ubc 
Organic 
principle 

of  II  n= 
epiration 


us.  He  sees  the  shining  of  them  and  hastens 
to  them.  One  by  one  they  are  shut  in  his 
face.  His  soul  is  damned  —  is  sentenced  to 
perpetual  consciousness  of  itself.  What  is 
there  that  he  can  do  next?  Turning  round 
and  round  inside  himself,  learning  how  little 
worth  while  it  is,  there  is  but  one  fate  left 
open  to  such  a  man,  a  blind  and  desperate 
lunge  into  the  roar  of  the  life  he  cannot  see, 
for  facts— the  usual  L.H.D.,  Ph.D.  fate.  If 
he  piles  around  him  the  huge  hollow  sounding 
outsides  of  things  in  the  universe  that  have 
lived,  bones  of  soul,  matter  of  bodies,  skeletons 
of  lives  that  men  have  lived,  who  shall  blame 
him  ?  He  wonders  why  they  have  lived,  why 
any  one  lives;  and  if,  when  he  has  wondered 
long  enough  why  any  one  lives,  we  choose  to 
make  him  the  teacher  of  the  young,  that  the 
young  also  may  wonder  why  any  one  lives, 
why  should  we  call  him  to  account  ?  He  can- 
not but  teach  what  he  has,  what  has  been 
given  him,  and  we  have  but  ourselves  to  thank 
that,  as  every  radiant  June  comes  round, 
diplomas  for  ennui  are  being  handed  out  — 
thousands  of  them  —  to  specially  favoured 
children  through  all  this  broad  and  glorious 
land. 


The    Fifth    Interference: 
The  Habit  of  Analysis 


Hf  Sbafeespeare  Came  to  Cbicago 

IT  is  one  of  the  supreme  literary  excellences 
of  the  Bible  that,  until  the  other  day  al- 
most, it  had  never  occurred  to  any  one  that  it  Chicago 
is  literature  at  all.  It  has  been  read  by  men 
and  women,  and  children  and  priests  and 
popes,  and  kings  and  slaves  and  the  dying 
of  all  ages,  and  it  has  come  to  them  not  as  a 
book,  but  as  if  it  were  something  happening  to 
them. 

It  has  come  to  them  as  nights  and  mornings 
come,  and  sleep  and  death,  as  one  of  the 
great,  simple,  infinite  experiences  of  human 
life.  It  has  been  the  habit  of  the  world  to  take 
the  greatest  works  of  art,  like  the  greatest 


126 


epcare 
Came  to 
Gbfcago 


works  of  God,  in  this  simple  and  straight- 
forward fashion,  as  great  experiences.  If  a 
masterpiece  really  is  a  masterpiece,  and  rains 
and  shines  its  instincts  on  us  as  masterpieces 
should,  we  do  not  think  whether  it  is  literary 
or  not,  any  more  than  we  gaze  on  mountains 
and  stop  to  think  how  sublimely  scientific, 
raptly  geological,  and  logically  chemical  they 
are.  These  things  are  true  about  mountains, 
and  have  their  place.  But  it  is  the  nature  of  a 
mountain  to  insist  upon  its  own  place — to  be 
an  experience  first  and  to  be  as  scientific  and 
geological  and  chemical  as  it  pleases  afterward. 
It  is  the  nature  of  anything  powerful  to  be  an 
experience  first  and  to  appeal  to  experience. 
When  we  have  time,  or  when  the  experience 
is  over,  a  mountain  or  a  masterpiece  can  be 
analysed — the  worst  part  of  it;  but  we  cannot 
make  a  masterpiece  by  analysing  it;  and  a 
mountain  has  never  been  appreciated  by  pound- 
ing it  into  trap,  quartz,  and  conglomerate;  and 
it  still  holds  good,  as  a  general  principle,  that 
making  a  man  appreciate  a  mountain  by  pound- 
ing it  takes  nearly  as  long  as  making  the 
mountain,  and  is  not  nearly  so  worth  while. 

Not  many  years  ago,  in  one  of  our  journals 
of  the  more  literary  sort,  there  appeared  a  few 
directions  from  Chicago  University  to  the  late 
John  Keats  on  how  to  write  an  "  Ode  to  a 
Nightingale. ' '  These  directions  were  from  the 
Head  of  a  Department,  who,  in  a  previous  paper 
in  the  same  journal,  had  rewritten  the  "  Ode  to 


Ht  Sbaftespeare  Came  to 


127 


a  Grecian  Urn."  The  main  point  the  Head  of 
the  Department  made,  with  regard  to  the  night- 
ingale, was  that  it  was  not  worth  rewriting. 
"  '  The  Ode  to  the  Nightingale,'  "  says  he, 
"  offers  me  no  such  temptation.  There  is  al- 
most nothing  in  it  that  properly  belongs  to 
the  subject  treated.  The  faults  of  the  Grecian 
Urn  are  such  as  the  poet  himself,  under  wise 
criticism"  (see  catalogue  of  Chicago  Univer- 
sity) "  might  easily  have  removed.  The  faults 
of  the  Nightingale  are  such  that  they  cannot 
be  removed.  They  inhere  in  the  idea  and 
structure."  The  Head  of  the  Department 
dwells  at  length  upon  "the  hopeless  fortune 
of  the  poem,"  expressing  his  regret  that  it  can 
never  be  retrieved.  After  duly  analysing  what 
he  considers  the  poem's  leading  thought,  he 
regrets  that  a  poet  like  John  Keats  should  go 
so  far,  apropos  of  a  nightingale,  as  to  sigh  in 
his  immortal  stanzas,  ' '  for  something  which, 
whatever  it  may  be,  is  nothing  short  of  a  dead 
drunk." 

One  hears  the  soul  of  Keats  from  out  its 
eternal  Italy — 


If  Sbafte. 
epeare 
(Came  to 

Cbicago 


"  Is  there  no  one  near  to  help  me  ? 

.     .     .     No  fair  dawn 

Of  Hfe  from  charitable  voice?    No  sweet  saying 
To  set  my  dull  and  sadden'd  spirit  playing  ?  " 


The  Head  of  the  Department  goes  on,  and  the 
lines — 


128 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


iff  Sbafte- 
epeare 
Came  to 

Chicago 


Still  wouldst  thou  sing  and  I  have  ears  in  vain — 
To  thy  high  requiem  become  a  sod — 

are  passed  through  analysis.  ' '  What  the  fit- 
ness is, ' '  he  says,  ' '  or  what  the  poetic  or  other 
effectiveness  of  suggesting  that  the  corpse  of  a 
person  who  has  ceased  upon  the  midnight  still 
has  ears,  only  to  add  that  it  has  them  in  vain,  I 
cannot  pretend  to  understand  " — one  of  a  great 
many  other  things  that  the  Head  of  the  De- 
partment does  not  pretend  to  understand.  It 
is  probably  with  the  same  outfit  of  not  pretend- 
ing to  understand  that — for  the  edification  of 
the  merely  admiring  mind  —  the  ' '  Ode  to  a 
Grecian  Urn"  was  rewritten.  To  Keats's 
lines — 

Oh,  Attic  shape !    Fair  attitude  !  with  brede 

Of  marble  men  and  maidens  overwrought, 
With  forest  branches  and  the  trodden  weed ; 

Thou,  silent  form,  dost  tease  us  out  of  thought 
As  doth  eternity  :  Cold  Pastoral ! 

When  old  age  shall  this  generation  waste, 
Thou  shalt  remain,  in  midst  of  other  woe 

Than  ours,  a  friend  to  man,  to  whom  thou  sayest, 
"  Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty  "—that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know — 

he  makes  various  corrections,  offering  as  a 
substitute-conclusion  to  the  poet's  song  the 
following  outburst : 


Preaching  this  wisdom  with  thy  cheerful  mien  : 

Possessing  beauty  thou  possessest  all ; 

Pause  at  that  goal,  nor  farther  push  thy  quest. 


Ht  Sbafeespeare  Came  to  Gbicaao 


129 


It  would  not  be  just  to  the  present  state  of 
academic  instruction  in  literature  to  illustrate 
it  by  such  an  extreme  instance  as  this  of  the 
damage  the  educated  mind — debauched  with 
analysis — is  capable  of  doing  to  the  reading 
habit.  It  is  probable  that  a  large  proportion  of 
the  teachers  of  literature  in  the  United  States, 
both  out  of  their  sense  of  John  Keats  and  out 
of  respect  to  themselves,  would  have  publicly 
resented  this  astonishing  exhibit  of  the  ex- 
treme literary-academic  mind  in  a  prominent 
journal,  had  they  not  suspected  that  its  editor, 
having  discovered  a  literary-academic  mind 
that  could  take  itself  as  seriously  as  this,  had 
deliberately  brought  it  out  as  a  spectacle.  It 
could  do  no  harm  to  Keats,  certainly,  or  to  any 
one  else,  and  would  afford  an  infinite  deal  of 
amusement — the  journal  argued — to  let  a  mind 
like  this  clatter  down  a  column  to  oblivion. 
So  it  did.  It  was  taken  by  all  concerned, 
teachers,  critics,  and  observers  alike,  as  one 
of  the  more  interesting  literary  events  of  the 
season. 

Unfortunately,  however,  entertainments  of 
this  kind  have  a  very  serious  side  to  them.  It 
is  one  thing  to  smile  at  an  individual  when  one 
knows  that  standing  where  he  does  he  stands 
by  himself,  and  another  to  smile  at  an  indi- 
vidual when  one  knows  that  he  is  not  standing 
by  himself,  that  he  is  a  type,  that  there  must 
be  a  great  many  others  like  him  or  he  would 
not  be  standing  where  he  does  at  all.  When 


ft  Sba!:e= 

epeare 

Came  to 

Chicago 


130 


Xost  Hrt  of 


If  Sbafees 
gpeare 
Came  to 

Cbfcago 


a  human  being  is  seen  taking  his  stand  over 
his  own  soul  in  public  print,  summing  up  its 
emptiness  there,  and  gloating  over  it,  we  are 
in  the  presence  of  a  disheartening  fact.  It  can 
be  covered  up,  however,  and  in  what,  on  the 
whole,  is  such  a  fine,  true-ringing,  hearty  old 
world  as  this,  it  need  not  be  made  much  of; 
but  when  we  find  that  a  mind  like  this  has 
been  placed  at  the  head  of  a  Department  of 
Poetry  in  a  great,  representative  American 
university,  the  last  thing  that  should  be  done 
with  it  is  to  cover  it  up.  The  more  people 
know  where  the  analytical  mind  is  to-day — 
where  it  is  getting  to  be — and  the  more  they 
think  what  its  being  there  means,  the  better. 
The  signs  of  the  times,  the  destiny  of  educa- 
tion, and  the  fate  of  literature  are  all  involved 
in  a  fact  like  this.  The  mere  possibility  of 
having  the  analysing-grinding  mind  engaged 
in  teaching  a  spontaneous  art  in  a  great  educa- 
tional institution  would  be  of  great  significance. 
The  fact  that  it  is  actually  there  and  that  no 
particular  comment  is  excited  by  its  being 
there,  is  significant.  It  betrays  not  only  what 
the  general,  national,  academic  attitude  toward 
literature  is,  but  that  that  attitude  has  become 
habitual,  that  it  is  taken  for  granted. 

One  would  be  inclined  to  suppose,  looking 
at  the  matter  abstractly,  that  all  students  and 
teachers  of  literature  would  take  it  for  granted 
that  the  practice  of  making  a  dispassionate 
criticism  of  a  passion  would  be  a  dangerous 


If  Sbaftespeare  Came  to  Chicago 


practice  for  any  vital  and  spontaneous  nature 
— certainly  the  last  kind  of  practice  that  a 
student  of  the  art  of  poetry  (that  is,  the  art  of 
literature,  in  the  essential  sense)  would  wish 
to  make  himself  master  of.  The  first  item  in 
a  critic's  outfit  for  criticising  a  passion  is  hav- 
ing one.  The  fact  that  this  is  not  regarded  as 
an  axiom  in  our  current  education  in  books  is 
a  very  significant  fact.  It  goes  with  another 
significant  fact  —  the  assumption,  in  most 
courses  of  literature  as  at  present  conducted, 
that  a  little  man  (that  is,  a  man  incapable  of  a 
great  passion),  who  is  not  even  able  to  read  a 
book  with  a  great  passion  in  it,  can  somehow 
teach  other  people  to  read  it. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  deny  that  analysis  oc- 
casionally plays  a  valuable  part  in  bringing  a 
pupil  to  a  true  method  and  knowledge  of 
literature,  but  unless  the  analysis  is  inspired 
nothing  can  be  more  dangerous  to  a  pupil  under 
his  thirtieth  year,  even  for  the  shortest  period 
of  time,  or  more  likely  to  move  him  over  to  the 
farthest  confines  of  the  creative  life,  or  more 
certain,  if  continued  long  enough,  to  set  him 
forever  outside  all  power  or  possibility  of  power, 
either  in  the  art  of  literature  or  in  any  of  the 
other  arts. 

The  first  objection  to  the  analysis  of  one  of 
Shakespeare's  plays  as  ordinarily  practised  in 
courses  of  literature  is  that  it  is  of  doubtful 
value  to  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  pupils 
in  a  thousand — if  they  do  it.  The  second  is, 


If  Sbafcca 

epeare 

Came  to 

Chicago 


132 


OLost  art  of 


epeare 
Came  to 

Gbicago 


that  they  cannot  do  it.  The  analysing  of  one 
of  Shakespeare's  plays  requires  more  of  a 
commonplace  pupil  than  Shakespeare  required 
of  himself.  The  apology  that  is  given  for  the 
analysing  method  is,  that  the  process  of  analys- 
ing a  work  of  Shakespeare's  will  show  the  pupil 
how  Shakespeare  did  it,  and  that  by  seeing 
how  Shakespeare  did  it  he  will  see  how  to  do 
it  himself. 

In  the  first  place,  analysis  will  not  show  how 
Shakespeare  did  it,  and  in  the  second  place,  if 
it  does,  it  will  show  that  he  did  not  do  it  by 
analysis.  In  the  third  place, — to  say  nothing 
of  not  doing  it  by  analysis, — if  he  had  analysed 
it  before  he  did  it,  he  could  not  have  analysed 
it  afterward  in  the  literal  and  modern  sense.  In 
the  fourth  place,  even  if  Shakespeare  were  able 
to  do  his  work  by  analysing  it  before  he  did  it,  it 
does  not  follow  that  undergraduate  students  can. 

A  man  of  genius,  with  all  his  onset  of  natural 
passion,  his  natural  power  of  letting  himself 
go,  could  doubtless  do  more  analysing,  both 
before  and  after  his  work,  than  any  one  else 
without  being  damaged  by  it.  What  shall  be 
said  of  the  folly  of  trying  to  teach  men  of 
talent,  and  the  mere  pupils  of  men  of  talent, 
by  analysis — by  a  method,  that  is,  which,  even 
if  it  succeeds  in  doing  what  it  tries  to  do,  can 
only,  at  the  very  best,  reveal  to  the  pupil  the 
roots  of  his  instincts  before  they  have  come 
up?  And  why  is  it  that  our  courses  of  litera- 
ture may  be  seen  assuming  to-day  on  every 


If  Sbafeespeare  dame  to  Gbfcaao 


133 


hand,  almost  without  exception,  that  by  teach- 
ing men  to  analyse  their  own  inspirations — the 
inspirations  they  have — and  teaching  them  to 
analyse  the  inspirations  of  other  men — inspira- 
tions they  can  never  have — we  are  somehow 
teaching  them  "  English  literature"  ? 

It  seems  to  have  been  overlooked  while  we 
are  all  analytically  falling  at  Shakespeare's 
feet,  that  Shakespeare  did  not  become  Shake- 
speare by  analytically  falling  at  any  one's  feet 
— not  even  at  his  own — and  that  the  most  im- 
portant difference  between  being  a  Shakespeare 
and  being  an  analyser  of  Shakespeare  is  that 
with  the  man  Shakespeare  no  submitting  of 
himself  to  the  analysis-gymnast  would  ever 
have  been  possible,  and  with  the  students  of 
Shakespeare  (as  students  go  and  if  they  are 
caught  young  enough)  the  habit  of  analysis  is 
not  only  a  possibility  but  a  sleek,  industrious, 
and  complacent  certainty. 

After  a  little  furtive  looking  backward  per- 
haps, and  a  few  tremblings  and  doubts,  they 
shall  all  be  seen,  almost  to  a  man,  offering 
their  souls  to  Moloch,  as  though  the  not  hav- 
ing a  soul  and  not  missing  it  were  the  one  final 
and  consummate  triumph  that  literary  culture 
could  bring.  Flocks  of  them  can  be  seen  with 
the  shining  in  their  faces  year  after  year,  term 
after  term,  almost  anywhere  on  the  civilised 
globe,  doing  this  very  thing — doing  it  under 
the  impression  that  they  are  learning  some- 
thing, and  not  until  the  shining  in  their  faces 


If  Sbahcs 

epeare 
Came  to 

Cbicago 


134 


OLost  Hrt  of  IReaoina 


epeare 
Came  to 
Cbicago 


is  gone  will  they  be  under  the  impression  that 
they  have  learned  it  (whatever  it  is)  and  that 
they  are  educated. 

The  fact  that  the  analytic  mind  is  establish- 
ing itself,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  as  the 
sentinel  in  college  life  of  the  entire  creative 
literature  of  the  world  is  a  fact  with  many 
meanings  in  it.  It  means  not  only  that  there 
are  a  great  many  more  minds  like  it  in  litera- 
ture, but  that  a  great  many  other  minds — 
nearly  all  college-educated  minds — are  being 
made  like  it.  It  means  that  unless  the  danger 
is  promptly  faced  and  acted  upon  the  next 
generation  of  American  citizens  can  neither 
expect  to  be  able  to  produce  literature  of  its 
own  nor  to  appreciate  or  enjoy  literature  that 
has  been  produced.  It  means  that  another 
eighteenth  century  is  coming  to  the  world; 
and,  as  the  analysis  is  deeper  than  before  and 
more  deadly-clever  with  the  deeper  things  than 
before,  it  is  going  to  be  the  longest  eighteenth 
century  the  world  has  ever  seen — generations 
with  machines  for  hands  and  feet,  machines 
for  minds,  machines  outside  their  minds  to  en- 
joy the  machines  inside  their  minds  with. 
Every  man  with  his  information-machine  to  be 
cultured  with,  his  religious  machine  to  be  good 
with,  and  his  private  Analysis  Machine  to  be 
beautiful  with,  shall  take  his  place  in  the 
world — shall  add  his  soul  to  the  Machine  we 
make  a  world  with.  For  every  man  that  is 
born  on  the  earth  one  more  joy  shall  be  crowded 


flf  Sbafeespeare  Came  to  Cbicago 


135 


out  of  it — one  more  analysis  of  joy  shall  take 
its  place,  go  round  and  round  under  the  stars 
— dew,  dawn,  and  darkness — until  it  stops. 
How  a  sunrise  is  made  and  why  a  cloud  is 
artistic  and  how  pines  should  be  composed  in 
a  landscape,  all  men  shall  know.  We  shall 
criticise  the  technique  of  thunderstorms.  ' '  And 
what  is  a  sunset  after  all  ?  "  The  reflection  of 
a  large  body  on  rarefied  air.  Through  analysed 
heaven  and  over  analysed  fields  it  trails  its 
joylessness  around  the  earth. 

Time  was,  when  the  setting  of  the  sun  was 
the  playing  of  two  worlds  upon  a  human  be- 
ing's life  on  the  edge  of  the  little  day,  the 
blending  of  sense  and  spirit  for  him,  earth  and 
heaven,  out  in  the  still  west.  His  whole  being 
went  forth  to  it.  He  watched  with  it  and 
prayed  and  sang  with  it.  In  its  presence  his 
soul  walked  down  to  the  stars.  Out  of  the  joy 
of  his  life,  the  finite  sorrow  and  the  struggle  of 
his  life,  he  gazed  upon  it.  It  was  the  portrait 
of  his  infinite  self.  Every  setting  sun  that 
came  to  him  was  a  compact  with  Eternal  Joy. 
The  Night  itself — his  figure  faint  before  it  in 
the  flicker  of  the  east  —  whispered  to  him: 
"  Thou  also — hills  and  heavens  around  thee, 
hills  and  heavens  within  thee — oh,  Child  of 
Time— Thou  also  art  God!  " 

' '  Ah  me !  How  I  could  love !  My  soul  doth 
melt,"  cries  Keats: 

Ye  deaf  and  senseless  minutes  of  the  day, 
And  thou  old  forest,  hold  ye  this  for  true, 


If  Sba  fce= 

speare 

(Tame  to 

Cbicago 


i36 


Xost  Set  of 


There  is  no  lightning,  no  authentic  dew 
But  in  the  eye  of  love  ;  there  's  not  a  sound, 
Melodious  howsoever,  can  confound 
The  heavens  and  the  earth  to  such  a  death 
As  doth  the  voice  of  love  ;  there  's  not  a  breath 
Will  mingle  kindly  with  the  meadow  air, 
Till  it  has  panted  round,  and  stolen  a  share 
Of  passion  from  the  heart. 

John  Keats  and  William  Shakespeare  wrote 
masterpieces  because  they  had  passions,  spirit- 
ual experiences,  and  the  daily  habit  of  inspira- 
tion. In  so  far  as  these  masterpieces  are  being 
truthfully  taught,  they  are  taught  by  teachers 
who  themselves  know  the  passion  of  creation. 
They  teach  John  Keats  and  William  Shake- 
speare by  rousing  the  same  passions  and  ex- 
periences in  the  pupil  that  Keats  and  Shake- 
speare had,  and  by  daily  appealing  to  them. 


II 

Hnatysefc 


There  are  a  great  many  men  in  the  world  to- 
day, faithfully  doing  their  stint  in  it  (they  are 
commonly  known  as  men  of  talent),  who  would 
have  been  men  of  genius  if  they  had  dared. 
Education  has  made  cowards  of  us  all,  and  the 
habit  of  examining  the  roots  of  one's  instincts, 
before  they  come  up,  is  an  incurable  habit. 

The  essential  principle  in  a  true  work  of  art 
is  always  the  poem  or  the  song  that  is  hidden 


Baalists  Bnal£se& 


137 


in  it.  A  work  of  art  by  a  man  of  talent  is 
generally  ranked  by  the  fact  that  it  is  the 
work  of  a  man  who  analyses  a  song  before 
he  sings  it.  He  puts  down  the  words  of  the 
song  first — writes  it,  that  is — in  prose.  Then 
he  lumbers  it  over  into  poetry.  Then  he 
looks  around  for  some  music  for  it.  Then  he 
practises  at  singing  it,  and  then  he  sings  it. 
The  man  of  genius,  on  the  other  hand,  whether 
he  be  a  great  one  or  a  very  little  one,  is  known 
by  the  fact  that  he  has  a  song  sent  to  him. 
He  sings  it.  He  has  a  habit  of  humming  it 
over  afterwards.  His  humming  it  over  after- 
wards is  his  analysis.  It  is  the  only  possible 
inspired  analysis. 

The  difference  between  these  two  types  of 
men  is  so  great  that  anything  that  the  smaller 
of  them  has  to  say  about  the  spirit  or  the  pro- 
cesses of  the  other  is  of  little  value.  When 
one  of  them  tries  to  teach  the  work  of  the 
other,  which  is  what  almost  always  occurs, — 
the  man  of  talent  being  the  typical  profes- 
sor of  works  of  genius, — the  result  is  fatal. 
A  singer  who  is  so  little  capable  of  singing  that 
he  can  give  a  prose  analysis  of  his  own  song 
while  it  is  coming  to  him  and  before  he  sings 
it,  can  hardly  be  expected  to  extemporise  an 
inspired  analysis  of  another  man's  song  after 
reading  it.  If  a  man  cannot  apply  inspired 
analysis  to  a  little  common  passion  in  a  song 
he  has  of  his  own,  he  is  placed  in  a  hopeless 
position  when  he  tries  to  give  an  inspired 


Hnalvjsis 


138 


Xost  Brt  of  TReafcing 


Bnalvsis 


analysis  of  a  passion  that  only  another  man 
could  have  and  that  only  a  great  man  would 
forget  himself  long  enough  to  have. 

An  inspired  analysis  may  be  denned  as  the 
kind  of  analysis  that  the  real  poet  in  his  crea- 
tively critical  mood  is  able  to  give  to  his  work 
— a  low-singing  or  humming  analysis  in  which 
all  the  elements  of  the  song  are  active  and  all 
the  faculties  and  all  the  senses  work  on  the 
subject  at  once.  The  proportions  and  relations 
of  a  living  thing  are  all  kept  perfect  in  an  in- 
spired analysis,  and  the  song  is  made  perfect 
at  last,  not  by  being  taken  apart,  but  by  being 
made  to  pass  its  delight  more  deeply  and  more 
slowly  through  the  singer's  utmost  self  to  its 
fulfilment. 

What  is  ordinarily  taught  as  analysis  is  very 
different  from  this.  It  consists  in  the  deliber- 
ate and  triumphant  separation  of  the  faculties 
from  one  another  and  from  the  thing  they  have 
produced — the  dull,  bare,  pitiless  process  of 
passing  a  living  and  beautiful  thing  before  one 
vacant,  staring  faculty  at  a  time.  This  faculty, 
being  left  in  the  stupor  of  being  all  by  itself, 
sits  in  complacent  judgment  upon  a  work  of 
art,  the  very  essence  of  the  life  and  beauty  of 
which  is  its  appealing  to  all  of  the  faculties 
and  senses  at  once,  in  their  true  proportion, 
glowing  them  together  into  'a  unit — namely, 
several  things  made  into  one  thing,  that  is — 
several  things  occupying  the  same  time  and 
the  same  place,  that  is — synthesis.  An  in- 


139 


spired  analysis  is  the  rehearsal  of  a  synthesis. 
An  analysis  is  not  inspired  unless  it  comes  as  Hnals8el) 
a  flash  of  light  and  a  burst  of  music  and  a 
breath  of  fragrance  all  in  one.  Such  an  analy- 
sis cannot  be  secured  with  painstaking  and 
slowness,  unless  the  painstaking  and  slowness 
are  the  rehearsal  of  a  synthesis,  and  all  the 
elements  in  it  are  laboured  on  and  delighted  in 
at  once.  It  must  be  a  low-singing  or  hum- 
ming analysis. 

The  expert  student  or  teacher  of  poetry  who 
makes  "a  dispassionate  criticism  "  of  a  passion, 
who  makes  it  his  special  boast  that  he  is  able 
to  apply  his  intellect  severely  by  itself  to  a 
great  poem,  boasts  of  the  devastation  of  the 
highest  power  a  human  being  can  attain.  The 
commonest  man  that  lives,  whatever  his  powers 
may  be,  if  they  are  powers  that  act  together, 
can  look  down  on  a  man  whose  powers  cannot, 
as  a  mutilated  being.  While  it  cannot  be  de- 
nied that  a  being  who  has  been  thus  especially 
mutilated  is  often  possessed  of  a  certain  literary 
ability,  he  belongs  to  the  acrobats  of  literature 
rather  than  to  literature  itself.  The  contor- 
tionist who  separates  himself  from  his  hands 
and  feet  for  the  delectation  of  audiences,  the 
circus  performer  who  makes  a  battering-ram  of 
his  head  and  who  glories  in  being  shot  out  of  a 
cannon  into  space  and  amazement,  goes  through 
his  motions  with  essentially  the  same  pride  in 
his  strength,  and  sustains  the  same  relation  to 
the  strength  of  the  real  man  of  the  world. 


140 


OLost  Brt  of  TReaoing 


Whatever  a  course  of  literary  criticism  may 
be,  or  its  value  may  be,  to  the  pupils  who  take 
it,  it  consists,  more  often  than  not,  on  the  part 
of  pupil  and  teacher  both,  in  the  dislocating  of 
one  faculty  from  all  the  others,  and  the  bearing 
it  down  hard  on  a  work  of  art,  as  if  what  it  was 
made  of,  or  how  it  was  made,  could  only  be 
seen  by  scratching  it. 

It  is  to  be  expected  now  and  then,  in  the 
hurry  of  the  outside  world,  that  a  newspaper 
critic  will  be  found  writing  a  cerebellum  criti- 
cism of  a  work  of  the  imagination;  but  the 
student  of  literature,  in  the  comparative  quiet 
and  leisure  of  the  college  atmosphere,  who 
works  in  the  same  separated  spirit,  who  esti- 
mates a  work  by  dislocating  his  faculties  on  it, 
is  infinitely  more  blameworthy;  and  the  col- 
lege teacher  who  teaches  a  work  of  genius  by 
causing  it  to  file  before  one  of  his  faculties  at  a 
time,  when  all  of  them  would  not  be  enough, — 
who  does  this  in  the  presence  of  young  persons 
and  trains  them  to  do  it  themselves, — is  a  public 
menace.  The  attempt  to  master  a  masterpiece, 
as  it  were,  by  reading  it  first  with  the  sense  of 
sight,  and  then  with  the  sense  of  smell,  and 
with  all  the  senses  in  turn,  keeping  them  care- 
fully guarded  from  their  habit  of  sensing  things 
together,  is  not  only  a  self-destructive  but  a 
hopeless  attempt.  A  great  mind,  even  if  it 
would  attempt  to  master  anything  in  this  way, 
would  find  it  hopeless,  and  the  attempt  to 
learn  a  great  work  of  art — a  great  whole — by 


analysis  Hnal^sefc 


141 


applying  the  small  parts  of  a  small  mind  to  it, 
one  after  the  other,  is  more  hopeless  still.  It 
can  be  put  down  as  a  general  principle  that  a 
human  being  who  is  so  little  alive  that  he  finds 
his  main  pleasure  in  life  in  taking  himself 
apart,  can  find  little  of  value  for  others  in  a 
masterpiece — a  work  of  art  which  is  so  much 
alive  that  it  cannot  be  taken  apart,  and  which 
is  eternal  because  its  secret  is  eternally  its 
own.  If  the  time  ever  comes  when  it  can 
be  taken  apart,  it  will  be  done  only  by  a  man 
who  could  have  put  it  together,  who  is  more 
alive  than  the  masterpiece  is  alive.  Until  the 
masterpiece  meets  with  a  master  who  is  more 
creative  than  its  first  master  was,  the  less  the 
motions  of  analysis  are  gone  through  with  by 
those  who  are  not  masters,  the  better.  A 
masterpiece  cannot  be  analysed  by  the  cold  and 
negative  process  of  being  taken  apart.  It  can 
only  be  analysed  by  being  melted  down.  It 
can  only  be  melted  down  by  a  man  who  has 
creative  heat  in  him  to  melt  it  down  and  the 
daily  habit  of  glowing  with  creative  heat. 

It  is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that 
the  fewer  resources  an  artist  has,  the  more 
things  there  are  in  nature  and  in  the  nature 
of  life  which  he  thinks  are  not  beautiful.  The 
making  of  an  artist  is  his  sense  of  selection. 
If  he  is  an  artist  of  the  smaller  type,  he  selects 
beautiful  subjects — subjects  with  ready-made 
beauty  in  them.  If  he  is  an  artist  of  the  larger 
type,  he  can  hardly  miss  making  almost  any 


Hnalgeie 


142 


Xost  Brt  of  IReaoina 


subject  beautiful,  because  he  has  so  many 
beautiful  things  to  put  it  with.  He  sees  every 
subject  the  way  it  is — that  is,  in  relation  to  a 
great  many  other  subjects — the  way  God  saw 
it,  when  He  made  it,  and  the  way  it  is. 

The  essential  difference  between  a  small 
mood  and  a  large  one  is  that  in  the  small  one 
we  see  each  thing  we  look  on,  comparatively 
by  itself,  or  with  reference  to  one  or  two  rela- 
tions to  persons  and  events.  In  our  larger 
mood  we  see  it  less  analytically.  We  see  it  as 
it  is  and  as  it  lives  and  as  a  god  would  see  it, 
playing  its  meaning  through  the  whole  created 
scheme  into  everything  else. 

The  soul  of  beauty  is  synthesis.  In  the 
presence  of  a  mountain  the  sound  of  a  hammer 
is  as  rich  as  a  symphony.  It  is  like  the  little 
word  of  a  great  man,  great  in  its  great  relations. 
When  the  spirit  is  waked  and  the  man  within 
the  man  is  listening  to  it,  the  sound  of  a  hoof 
on  a  lonely  road  in  the  great  woods  is  the 
footstep  of  cities  to  him  coming  through  the 
trees,  and  the  low,  chocking  sound  of  a  cart- 
wheel in  the  still  and  radiant  valley  throngs 
his  being  like  an  opera.  All  sights  and  echoes 
and  thoughts  and  feelings  revel  in  it.  It  is 
music  for  the  smoke,  rapt  and  beautiful,  rising 
from  the  chimneys  at  his  feet.  A  sheet  of  water 
— making  heaven  out  of  nothing  —  is  beautiful 
to  the  dullest  man,  because  he  can  not  analyse  it, 
could  not — even  if  he  would — contrive  to  see  it 
by  itself.  Skies  come  crowding  on  it.  There 


analysis  analyses 


143 


is  enough  poetry  in  the  mere  angle  of  a  sinking 
sun  to  flood  the  prose  of  a  continent  with,  be- 
cause the  gentle  earthlong  shadows  that  follow 
it  lay  their  fingers  upon  all  life  and  creep  to- 
gether innumerable  separated  things. 

In  the  meadow  where  our  birds  are  there  is 
scarcely  a  tree  in  sight  to  tangle  the  singing  in. 
It  is  a  meadow  with  miles  of  sunlight  in  it.  It 
seems  like  a  kind  of  world-melody  to  walk  in  the 
height  of  noon  there  —  infinite  grass,  infinite 
sky,  gusts  of  bobolinks'  voices— it 's  as  if  the  air 
that  drifted  down  made  music  of  itself;  and  the 
song  of  all  the  singing  everywhere — the  song 
the  soul  hears — comes  on  the  slow  winds. 

Half  the  delight  of  a  bobolink  is  that  he  is 
more  synthetic,  more  of  a  poet,  than  other 
birds, — has  a  duet  in  his  throat.  He  bursts 
from  the  grass  and  sings  in  bursts — plays  his 
own  obligate  while  he  goes.  One  can  never 
see  him  in  his  eager  flurry,  between  his  low 
heaven  and  his  low  nest,  without  catching  the 
lilt  of  inspiration.  Like  the  true  poet,  he  suits 
the  action  to  the  word  in  a  weary  world,  and 
does  his  flying  and  singing  together.  The  song 
that  he  throws  around  him,  is  the  very  spirit  of 
his  wings — of  all  wings.  More  beauty  is  always 
the  putting  of  more  things  together.  They 
were  created  to  be  together.  The  spirit  of  art 
is  the  spirit  that  finds  this  out.  Even  the 
bobolink  is  cosmic,  if  he  sings  with  room 
enough ;  and  when  the  heart  wakes,  the  song  of 
the  cricket  is  infinite.  We  hear  it  across  stars. 


Bnalgefe 


144 


The  Sixth  Interference: 
Literary  Drill  in  College 


Seefcs  anb  Blossoms 

OUR  men  stood  before  God  at  the  end  of 
The  Firgt  Week>  watching  Him  whirl 
His  little  globe.*  The  first  man  said  to  Him, 
"  Tell  me  how  you  did  it."  The  second  man 
said,  "  I/et  me  have  it."  The  third  man  said, 
"  What  is  it  for  ?  "  The  fourth  man  said  no- 
thing, and  fell  down  and  worshipped.  Having 
worshipped  he  rose  to  his  feet  and  made  a 
world  himself. 

These  four  men  have  been  known  in  history 
as  the  Scientist,  the  Man  of  Affairs,  the  Phi- 
losopher, and  the  Artist.  They  stand  for  the 
four  necessary  points  of  view  in  reading  books. 

*  Recently  discovered  manuscript. 


Seeos  ano  Blossoms 


145 


Most  of  the  readers  of  the  world  are  content 
to  be  partitioned  off,  and  having  been  duly  set 
down  for  life  in  one  or  the  other  of  these  four 
divisions  of  human  nature  they  take  sides 
from  beginning  to  end  with  one  or  the  other 
of  these  four  men.  It  is  the  distinction  of  the 
scholar  of  the  highest  class  in  every  period, 
that  he  declines  to  do  this.  In  so  far  as  he 
finds  each  of  the  four  men  taking  sides  against 
each  other,  he  takes  sides  against  each  of  them 
in  behalf  of  all.  He  insists  on  being  able  to 
absorb  knowledge,  to  read  and  write  in  all  four 
ways.  If  he  is  a  man  of  genius  as  well  as  a 
scholar,  he  insists  on  being  able  to  read  and 
write,  as  a  rule,  in  all  four  ways  at  once;  if  his 
genius  is  of  the  lesser  kind,  in  two  or  three  ways 
at  once.  The  eternal  books  are  those  that 
stand  this  four-sided  test.  They  are  written 
from  all  of  these  points  of  view.  They  have 
absorbed  into  themselves  the  four  moods  of 
creation  morning.  It  is  thus  that  they  bring 
the  morning  back  to  us. 

The  most  important  question  in  regard  to 
books  that  our  schools  and  institutions  of 
learning  are  obliged  to  face  at  present  is, 
11  How  shall  we  produce  conditions  that  will 
enable  the  ordinary  man  to  keep  the  propor- 
tions that  belong  to  a  man,  to  absorb  know- 
ledge, to  do  his  reading  and  writing  in  all  four 
ways  at  once  ?  "  In  other  words,  How  shall 
we  enable  him  to  be  a  natural  man,  a  man  of 
genius  as  far  as  he  goes  ? 


Sects  an& 
JBloaaoms 


146 


OLost  Hrt  of 


Sects  ant) 
Jjlossoma 


A  masterpiece  is  a  book  that  can  only  be 
read  by  a  man  who  is  a  master  in  some  degree 
of  the  things  the  book  is  master  of.  The  man 
who  has  mastered  things  the  most  is  the  man 
who  can  make  those  things.  The  man  who 
makes  things  is  the  artist.  He  has  bowed 
down  and  worshipped  and  he  has  arisen  and 
stood  before  God  and  created  before  Him,  and 
the  spirit  of  the  Creator  is  in  him.  To  take 
the  artist's  point  of  view,  is  to  take  the  point 
of  view  that  absorbs  and  sums  up  the  others. 
The  supremacy  and  comprehensiveness  of  this 
point  of  view  is  a  matter  of  fact  rather  than 
argument.  The  artist  is  the  man  who  makes 
the  things  that  Science  and  Practical  Affairs 
and  Philosophy  are  merely  about.  The  artist 
of  the  higher  order  is  more  scientific  than  the 
scientist,  more  practical  than  the  man  of 
affairs,  and  more  philosophic  than  the  philoso- 
pher, because  he  combines  what  these  men  do 
about  things,  and  what  these  men  say  about 
things,  into  the  things  themselves,  and  makes 
the  things  live. 

To  combine  these  four  moods  at  once  in 
one's  attitude  toward  an  idea  is  to  take  the 
artist's — that  is,  the  creative — point  of  view  to- 
ward it.  The  only  fundamental  outfit  a  man 
can  have  for  reading  books  in  all  four  ways 
at  once  is  his  ability  to  take  the  point  of  view 
of  the  man  who  made  the  book  in  all  four 
ways  at  once,  and  feel  the  way  he  felt  when  he 
made  it. 


Seefcs  nnfc  Blossoms 


'47 


The  organs  that  appreciate  literature  are  the 
organs  that  made  it.  True  reading  is  latent 
writing.  The  more  one  feels  like  writing  a 
book  when  he  reads  it  the  more  alive  his  read- 
ing is  and  the  more  alive  the  book  is. 

The  measure  of  culture  is  its  originating  and 
reproductive  capacity,  the  amount  of  seed  and 
blossom  there  is  in  it,  the  amount  it  can  afford 
to  throw  away,  and  secure  divine  results.  Un- 
less the  culture  in  books  we  are  taking  such 
national  pains  to  acquire  in  the  present  genera- 
tion can  be  said  to  have  this  pollen  quality  in 
it,  unless  it  is  contagious,  can  be  summed  up 
in  its  pollen  and  transmitted,  unless  it  is  no- 
thing more  or  less  than  life  itself  made  catch- 
ing, unless,  like  all  else  that  is  allowed  to  have 
rights  in  nature,  it  has  powers  also,  has  an 
almost  infinite  power  of  self-multiplication, 
self-perpetuation,  the  more  cultured  we  are 
the  more  emasculated  we  are.  The  vegetables 
of  the  earth  and  the  flowers  of  the  field — the 
very  codfish  of  the  sea  become  our  superiors. 
What  is  more  to  the  point,  in  the  minds  and 
interests  of  all  living  human  beings,  their 
culture  crowds  ours  out. 

Nature  may  be  somewhat  coarse  and  simple- 
minded  and  naive,  but  reproduction  is  her  main 
point  and  she  never  misses  it.  Her  prejudice 
against  dead  things  is  immutable.  If  a  man 
objects  to  this  prejudice  against  dead  things, 
his  only  way  of  making  himself  count  is  to  die. 
Nature  uses  such  men  over  again,  makes  them 


Seeds  and 
33Io00om0 


148 


OLost  art  of 


Seeds  an& 

JSlossoms 


into  something  more  worth  while,  something 
terribly  or  beautifully  alive, — and  goes  on  her 
way. 

If  this  principle — namely,  that  the  repro- 
ductive power  of  culture  is  the  measure  of  its 
value — were  as  fully  introduced  and  recognised 
in  the  world  of  books  as  it  is  in  the  world  of 
commerce  and  in  the  natural  world,  it  would 
revolutionise  from  top  to  bottom,  and  from 
entrance  examination  to  diploma,  the  entire 
course  of  study,  policy,  and  spirit  of  most  of 
our  educational  institutions.  Allowing  for 
exceptions  in  every  faculty — memorable  to  all 
of  us  who  have  been  college  students, — it  would 
require  a  new  corps  of  teachers. 

Entrance  examinations  for  pupils  and 
teachers  alike  would  determine  two  points. 
First,  what  does  this  person  know  about 
things  ?  Second,  what  is  the  condition  of  his 
organs — what  can  he  do  with  them  ?  If  the 
privilege  of  being  a  pupil  in  the  standard  col- 
lege were  conditioned  strictly  upon  the  second 
of  these  questions — the  condition  of  his  organs 
— as  well  as  upon  the  first,  fifty  out  of  a  hund- 
red pupils,  as  prepared  at  present,  would  fall 
short  of  admission.  If  the  same  test  were  ap- 
plied for  admission  to  the  faculty,  ninety  out 
of  a  hundred  teachers  would  fall  short  of  ad- 
mission. Having  had  analytic,  self-destruc- 
tive, learned  habits  for  a  longer  time  than 
their  pupils,  the  condition  of  their  organs  is 
more  hopeless. 


Seeos  ano  Blossoms 


149 


The  man  who  has  the  greatest  joy  in  a  sym- 
phony is: 

First,  the  man  who  composes  it. 

Second,  the  conductor. 

Third,  the  performers. 

Fourth,  those  who  might  be  composers  of 
such  music  themselves. 

Fifth,  those  in  the  audience  who  have  been 
performers. 

Sixth,  those  who  are  going  to  be. 

Seventh,  those  who  are  composers  of  such 
music  for  other  instruments. 

Eighth,  those  who  are  composers  of  music  in 
other  arts — literature,  painting,  sculpture,  and 
architecture. 

Ninth,  those  who  are  performers  of  music  on 
other  instruments. 

Tenth,  those  who  are  performers  of  music  in 
other  arts. 

Eleventh,  those  who  are  creators  of  music 
with  their  own  lives. 

Twelfth,  those  who  perform  and  interpret  in 
their  own  lives  the  music  they  hear  in  other 
lives. 

Thirteenth,  those  who  create  anything  what- 
ever and  who  love  perfection  in  it. 

Fourteenth,  "  The  Public." 

Fifteenth,  the  Professional  Critic  —  almost 
inevitably  at  the  fifteenth  remove  from  the 
heart  of  things  because  he  is  the  least  creative, 
unless  he  is  a  man  of  genius,  or  has  pluck  and 
talent  enough  to  work  his  way  through  the 


Sects  an& 
SHossome 


%ost  Hrt  ot 


private 

•KoaJ> : 

Dangerous 


other  fourteen  moods  and  sum  them  up  before 
he  ventures  to  criticise. 

The  principles  that  have  been  employed  in 
putting  life  into  literature  must  be  employed 
on  drawing  life  out  of  it.  These  principles  are 
the  creative  principles — principles  of  joy.  All 
influences  in  education,  family  training,  and  a 
man's  life  that  tend  to  overawe,  crowd  out, 
and  make  impossible  his  own  private,  personal, 
daily  habit  of  creative  joy  are  the  enemies  of 
books. 

II 

private  IRoafc :  Dangerous 

The  impotence  of  the  study  of  literature  as 
practised  in  the  schools  and  colleges  of  the 
present  day  turns  largely  on  the  fact  that  the 
principle  of  creative  joy — of  knowing  through 
creative  joy — is  overlooked.  The  field  of  vision 
is  the  book  and  not  the  world.  In  the  average 
course  in  literature  the  field  is  not  even  the 
book.  It  is  still  farther  from  the  creative 
point  of  view.  It  is  the  book  about  the  book. 

It  is  written  generally  in  the  laborious,  un- 
readable, well-read  style — the  book  about  the 
book.  You  are  as  one  (when  you  are  in  the 
book  about  the  book)  thrust  into  the  shadow 
of  the  endless  aisles  of  Other  Books — not  that 
they  are  referred  to  baldly,  or  vulgarly,  or  in 
the  text.  It  is  worse  than  this  (for  this  could 


private  1Roa& :  HJangerous 


be  skipped).  But  you  are  surrounded  help- 
lessly. Invisible  lexicons  are  on  every  page. 
Grammars  and  rhetorics,  piled  up  in  para- 
graphs and  between  the  lines  thrust  at  you 
everywhere.  Hardly  a  chapter  that  does  not 
convey  its  sense  of  struggling  faithfulness,  of 
infinite  forlorn  and  empty  plodding — and  all 
for  something  a  man  might  have  known  any- 
way. ' '  I  have  toted  a  thousand  books, ' '  each 
chapter  seems  to  say.  ' '  This  one  paragraph 
[page  1993  —  you  feel  it  in  the  paragraph] 
has  had  to  have  forty-seven  books  carried  to 
it."  Not  once,  except  in  loopholes  in  his  read- 
ing which  come  now  and  then,  does  the  face  of 
the  man's  soul  peep  forth.  One  does  not  ex- 
pect to  meet  any  one  in  the  book  about  the 
book — not  one's  self,  not  even  the  man  who 
writes  it,  nor  the  man  who  writes  the  book  that 
the  book  is  about.  One  is  confronted  with  a 
mob. 

Two  things  are  apt  to  be  true  of  students 
who  study  the  great  masters  in  courses  em- 
ploying the  book  about  the  book.  Even  if  the 
books  about  the  book  are  what  they  ought  to 
be,  the  pupils  of  such  courses  find  that  (i) 
studying  the  master,  instead  of  the  things  he 
mastered,  they  lose  all  power  over  the  things 
he  mastered;  (2)  they  lose,  consequently,  not 
only  the  power  of  creating  masterpieces  out 
of  these  things  themselves,  but  the  power 
of  enjoying  those  that  have  been  created  by 
others,  of  having  the  daily  experiences  that 


private 

•float: 
Bamjcrous 


15* 


3Lost  Hrt  of  IReaoinQ 


private 

•Koafc: 

2>angerou0 


make  such  joy  possible.  They  are  out  of 
range  of  experience.  They  are  barricaded 
against  life.  Inasmuch  as  the  creators  of 
literature,  without  a  single  exception,  have 
been  more  interested  in  life  than  in  books, 
and  have  written  books  to  help  other  people  to 
be  more  interested  in  life  than  in  books,  this  is 
the  gravest  possible  defect.  To  be  more  inter- 
ested in  life  than  in  books  is  the  first  essential 
for  creating  a  book  or  for  understanding  one. 

The  typical  course  of  study  now  offered  in 
literature  carries  on  its  process  of  paralysis  in 
various  ways: 

First.  It  undermines  the  imagination  by 
giving  it  paper  things  instead  of  real  ones  to 
work  on. 

Second.  By  seeing  that  these  things  are  se- 
lected instead  of  letting  the  imagination  select 
its  own  things  —  the  essence  of  having  an 
imagination. 

Third.  By  requiring  of  the  student  a  rigor- 
ous and  ceaselessly  unimaginative  habit.  The 
paralysis  of  the  learned  is  forced  upon  him. 
He  finds  little  escape  from  the  constant  read- 
ing of  books  that  have  all  the  imagination  left 
out  of  them. 

Fourth.  By  forcing  the  imagination  to  work 
so  hard  in  its  capacity  of  pack-horse  and  mem- 
ory that  it  has  no  power  left  to  go  anywhere 
of  itself. 

Fifth.  By  overawing  individual  initiative, 
undermining  personality  in  the  pupil,  crowding 


private 


:  H>anoerous 


153 


great  classics  into  him  instead  of  attracting  little 
ones  out  of  him.  Attracting  little  classics  out  of 
a  man  is  a  thing  that  great  classics  are  always 
intended  to  do — the  thing  that  they  always 
succeed  in  doing  when  left  to  themselves. 

Sixth.  The  teacher  of  literature  so-called, 
having  succeeded  in  destroying  the  personality 
of  the  pupil,  puts  himself  in  front  of  the  per- 
sonality of  the  author. 

Seventh.  A  teacher  who  destroys  personality 
in  a  pupil  is  the  wrong  personality  to  put  in 
front  of  an  author.  If  he  were  the  right  one, 
if  he  had  the  spirit  of  the  author,  his  being  in 
front,  now  and  then  at  least,  would  be  inter- 
pretation and  inspiration.  Not  having  the 
spirit  of  the  author,  he  is  intimidated  by  him, 
or  has  all  he  can  do  not  to  be.  A  classic  can- 
not reveal  itself  to  a  groveller  or  to  a  critic. 
It  is  a  book  that  was  written  standing  up  and 
it  can  only  be  studied  and  taught  by  those 
who  stand  up  without  knowing  it.  The  de- 
corous and  beautiful  despising  of  one's  self 
that  the  study  of  the  classics  has  come  to  be  as 
conducted  under  unclassic  teachers,  is  a  fact 
that  speaks  for  itself. 

Eighth.  Even  if  the  personality  of  the 
teacher  of  literature  is  so  fortunate  as  not  to 
be  ths  wrong  one,  there  is  not  enough  of  it. 
There  is  hardly  a  course  of  literature  that  can 
be  found  in  a  college  catalogue  at  the  present 
time  that  does  not  base  itself  on  the  dictum 
that  a  great  book  can  somehow  —  by  some 


private 

ttoab: 

Dangerous 


154 


3l05t  art  of  1Reaofn0 


private 

•RoaK: 

Dangerous 


mysterious  process — be  taught  by  a  small  per- 
son. The  axiom  that  necessarily  undermines  all 
such  courses  is  obvious  enough.  A  great  book 
cannot  be  taught  except  by  a  teacher  who  is 
literally  living  in  a  great  spirit,  the  spirit  the 
great  book  lived  in  before  it  became  a  book, — 
a  teacher  who  has  the  great  book  in  him — not 
over  him, — who,  if  he  took  time  for  it,  might 
be  capable  of  writing,  in  some  sense  at  least,  a 
great  book  himself.  When  the  teacher  is  a 
teacher  of  this  kind,  teaches  the  spirit  of  what 
he  teaches  —  that  is,  teaches  the  inside, —  a 
classic  can  be  taught. 

Otherwise  the  best  course  in  literature  that 
can  be  devised  is  the  one  that  gives  the  master- 
pieces the  most  opportunity  to  teach  them- 
selves. The  object  of  a  course  in  literature  is 
best  served  in  proportion  as  the  course  is  ar- 
ranged and  all  associated  studies  are  arranged 
in  such  a  way  as  to  secure  sensitive  and  con- 
tagious conditions  for  the  pupil's  mind  in  the 
presence  of  the  great  masters,  such  conditions 
as  give  the  pupil  time,  freedom,  space,  and 
atmosphere — the  things  out  of  which  a  master- 
piece is  written  and  with  which  alone  it  can  be 
taught,  or  can  teach  itself. 

All  that  comes  between  a  masterpiece  and 
its  thus  teaching  itself,  spreads  ruin  both 
ways.  The  masterpiece  is  partitioned  off  from 
the  pupil,  guarded  to  be  kept  aloof  from  him 
— outside  of  him.  The  pupil  is  locked  up  from 
himself — his  possible  self. 


private  IRoaD:  Dangerous 


155 


Not  too  much  stress  could  possibly  be  laid 
upon  intimacy  with  the  great  books  or  on  the 
constant  habit  of  living  on  them.  They  are 
the  movable  Olympus.  All  who  create  camp 
out  between  the  heavens  and  the  earth  on  them 
and  breathe  and  live  and  clirnb  upon  them. 
From  their  mighty  sides  they  look  down  on 
human  life.  But  classics  can  only  be  taught 
by  classics.  The  creative  paralysis  of  pupils 
who  have  drudged  most  deeply  in  classical 
training — English  or  otherwise — is  a  fact  that 
no  observer  of  college  life  can  overlook.  The 
guilt  for  this  state  of  affairs  must  be  laid  at 
the  door  of  the  classics  or  at  the  door  of  the 
teachers.  Either  the  classics  are  not  worth 
teaching  or  they  are  not  being  taught  properly. 

In  either  case  the  best  way  out  of  the  diffi- 
culty would  seem  to  be  for  teachers  to  let  the 
classics  teach  themselves,  to  furnish  the  stu- 
dents with  the  atmosphere,  the  conditions,  the 
points  of  view  in  life,  which  will  give  the 
classics  a  chance  to  teach  themselves. 

This  brings  us  to  the  important  fact  that 
teachers  of  literature  do  not  wish  to  create  the 
atmosphere,  the  conditions,  and  points  of  view 
that  give  the  classics  a  chance  to  teach  them- 
selves. Creating  the  atmosphere  for  a  classic 
in  the  life  of  a  student  is  harder  than  creating 
a  classic.  The  more  obvious  and  practicable 
course  is  to  teach  the  classic — teach  it  one's 
self,  whether  there  is  atmosphere  or  not. 

It  is  admitted  that  this  is  not  the  ideal  way 


private 

tRoao: 
©angerous 


Xost  Hct  of  TReafcing 


private 

•KoaS: 

Dangerous 


to  do  with  college  students  who  suppose  they 
are  studying  literature,  but  it  is  contended — 
college  students  and  college  electives  being 
what  they  are — that  there  is  nothing  else  to 
do.  The  situation  sums  itself  up  in  the  atti- 
tude of  self-defence.  "  It  may  be  (as  no  one 
needs  to  point  out),  that  the  teaching  of  litera- 
ture, as  at  present  conducted  in  college,  is  a 
somewhat  faithful  and  dogged  farce,  but  what- 
ever may  be  the  faults  of  modern  college- 
teaching  in  literature,  it  is  as  good  as  our  pupils 
deserve."  In  other  words,  the  teachers  are 
not  respecting  their  pupils.  It  may  be  said  to 
be  the  constitution  and  by-laws  of  the  litera- 
ture class  (as  generally  conducted)  that  the 
teachers  cannot  and  must  not  respect  their 
pupils.  They  cannot  afford  to.  It  costs  more 
than  most  pupils  are  mentally  worth,  it  is 
plausibly  contended,  to  furnish  students  in 
college  with  the  conditions  of  life  and  the  con- 
ditions in  their  own  minds  that  will  give  mas- 
terpieces a  fair  chance  at  them.  Ergo,  inas- 
much as  the  average  pupil  cannot  be  taught  a 
classic  he  must  be  choked  with  it. 

The  fact  that  the  typical  teacher  of  literature 
is  more  or  less  grudgingly  engaged  in  doing 
his  work  and  conducting  his  classes  under  the 
practical  working  theory  that  his  pupils  are 
not  good  enough  for  him,  suggests  two  import- 
ant principles. 

First.  If  his  pupils  are  good  enough  for  him, 
they  are  good  enough  to  be  taught  the  best 


private  TRoao :  Dangerous 


157 


there  is  in  him,  and  they  must  be  taught  this 
best  there  is  in  him,  as  far  as  it  goes,  whether 
all  of  them  are  good  enough  for  it  or  not. 
There  is  as  much  learning  in  watching  others 
being  educated  as  there  is  in  appearing  to  be 
educated  one's  self. 

Second.  If  his  pupils  are  not  good  enough 
for  him,  the  most  literary  thing  he  can  do  with 
them  is  to  make  them  good  enough.  If  he  is 
not  a  sufficiently  literary  teacher  to  divine  the 
central  ganglion  of  interest  in  a  pupil,  and  play 
upon  it  and  gather  delight  about  it  and  make 
it  gather  delight  itself,  the  next  most  literary 
thing  he  can  do  is  protect  both  the  books  and 
the  pupil  by  keeping  them  faithfully  apart  until 
they  are  ready  for  one  another. 

If  the  teacher  cannot  recognise,  arouse,  and 
exercise  such  organs  as  his  pupil  has,  and 
carry  them  out  into  themselves,  and  free  them 
in  self-activity,  the  pupil  may  be  unfortunate  in 
not  having  a  better  teacher,  but  he  is  fortunate 
in  having  no  better  organs  to  be  blundered  on. 

The  drawing  out  of  a  pupil's  first  faint  but 
honest  and  lasting  power  of  really  reading  a 
book,  of  knowing  what  it  is  to  be  sensitive  to 
a  book,  does  not  produce  a  very  literary-looking 
result,  of  course,  and  it  is  hard  to  give  the  re- 
sult an  impressive  or  learned  look  in  a  cata- 
logue, and  it  is  a  difficult  thing  to  do  without 
considering  each  pupil  as  a  special  human  being 
by  himself, — worthy  of  some  attention  on  that 
account, — but  it  is  the  one  upright,  worthy, 


private 

•Koafc: 

Dangerous 


158 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


private 
1RoaJ>: 

Dangerous 


and  beautiful  thing  a  teacher  can  do.  Any 
easier  course  he  may  choose  to  adopt  in  an  insti- 
tution of  learning  (even  when  it  is  taken  help- 
lessly or  thoughtlessly  as  it  generally  is)  is  insin- 
cere and  spectacular,  a  despising  not  only  of  the 
pupil  but  of  the  college  public  and  of  one's  self. 
If  it  is  true  that  the  right  study  of  literature 
consists  in  exercising  and  opening  out  the  hu- 
man mind  instead  of  making  it  a  place  for  cold 
storage,  it  is  not  necessary  to  call  attention  to 
the  essential  pretentiousness  and  shoddiness  of 
the  average  college  course  in  literature.  At 
its  best — that  is,  if  the  pupils  do  not  do  the 
work,  the  study  of  literature  in  college  is  a 
sorry  spectacle  enough— a  kind  of  huge  girls' 
school  with  a  chaperone  taking  its  park  walk. 
At  its  worst — that  is,  when  the  pupils  do  do 
the  work,  it  is  a  sight  that  would  break  a 
Homer's  heart.  If  it  were  not  for  a  few  in- 
spired and  inconsistent  teachers  blessing  par- 
ticular schools  and  scholars  here  and  there, 
doing  a  little  guilty,  furtive  teaching,  whether 
or  no,  discovering  short-cuts,  climbing  fences, 
breaking  through  the  fields,  and  walking  on 
the  grass,  the  whole  modern  scheme  of  elabor- 
ate, tireless,  endless  laboriousness  would  come 
to  nothing,  except  the  sight  of  larger  piles  of 
paper  in  the  world,  perhaps,  and  rows  of  dreary, 
dogged  people  with  degrees  lugging  them  back 
and  forth  in  it, — one  pile  of  paper  to  another 
pile  of  paper,  and  a  general  sense  that  some- 
thing is  being  done. 


Ube  ©rgans  of  ^literature 


159 


In  the  meantime,  human  life  around  us, 
trudging  along  in  its  anger,  sorrow,  or  bliss, 
wonders  what  this  thing  is  that  is  being  done, 
and  has  a  vague  and  troubled  respect  for  it; 
but  it  is  to  be  noted  that  it  buys  and  reads  the 
books  (and  that  it  has  always  bought  and  read 
the  books)  of  those  who  have  not  done  it,  and 
who  are  not  doing  it,  —  those  who,  standing  in 
the  spectacle  of  the  universe,  have  been  sens- 
itive to  it,  have  had  a  mighty  love  in  it,  or  a 
mighty  hate,  or  a  true  experience,  and  who 
have  laughed  and  cried  with  it  through  the 
hearts  of  their  brothers  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth. 

Ill 


©rgans  of  literature 


The  literary  problem  —  the  problem  of  pos- 
sessing or  appreciating  or  teaching  a  literary 
style  —  resolves  itself  at  last  into  a  pure  problem 
of  personality.  A  pupil  is  being  trained  in 
literature  in  proportion  as  his  spiritual  and 
physical  powers  are  being  brought  out  by  the 
teacher  and  played  upon  until  they  permeate 
each  other  in  all  that  he  does  and  in  all  that 
he  is  —  in  all  phases  of  his  life.  Unless  what  a 
pupil  is  glows  to  the  finger  tips  of  his  words, 
he  cannot  write,  and  unless  what  he  is  makes 
the  words  of  other  men  glow  when  he  reads, 
he  cannot  read. 


•Cbc 

Organs  of 
literature 


i6o 


%ost  Hrt  of  TReaoina 


Ube 

Organ0  of 
literature 


In  proportion  as  it  is  great,  literature  is  ad- 
dressed to  all  of  a  man's  body  and  to  all  of  his 
soul.  It  matters  nothing  how  much  a  man 
may  know  about  books,  unless  the  pages  of 
them  play  upon  his  senses  while  he  reads,  he 
is  not  physically  a  cultivated  man,  a  gentle- 
man, or  scholar  with  his  body.  Unless  books 
play  upon  all  his  spiritual  and  mental  sensibil- 
ities when  he  reads  he  cannot  be  considered 
a  cultivated  man,  a  gentleman,  and  a  scholar 
in  his  soul.  It  is  the  essence  of  all  great 
literature  that  it  makes  its  direct  appeal  to 
sense-perceptions  permeated  with  spiritual  sug- 
gestion. There  is  no  such  thing  possible  as 
being  a  literary  authority,  a  cultured  or  schol- 
arly man,  unless  the  permeating  of  the  sense- 
perceptions  with  spiritual  suggestion  is  a  daily 
and  unconscious  habit  of  life.  ' '  Every  man 
his  own  poet"  is  the  underlying  assumption 
of  every  genuine  work  of  art,  and  a  work  of 
art  cannot  be  taught  to  a  pupil  in  any  other 
way  than  by  making  this  same  pupil  a  poet, 
by  getting  him  to  discover  himself.  Continued 
and  unfaltering  disaster  is  all  that  can  be  ex- 
pected of  all  methods  of  literary  training  that 
do  not  recognise  this. 

To  teach  a  pupil  all  that  can  be  known 
about  a  great  poem  is  to  take  the  poetry  out 
of  him,  and  to  make  the  poem  prose  to  him 
forever.  A  pupil  cannot  even  be  taught  great 
prose  except  by  making  a  poet  of  him,  in  his 
attitude  toward  it,  and  by  so  governing  the 


Ube  ©r0ans  of  ^Literature 


161 


conditions,  excitements,  duties,  and  habits  of 
his  course  of  study  that  he  will  discover  he  is 
a  poet  in  spite  of  himself.  The  essence  of 
Walter  Pater's  essays  cannot  be  taught  to  a 
pupil  except  by  making  a  new  creature  of  him 
in  the  presence  of  the  things  the  essays  are 
about.  Unless  the  conditions  of  a  pupil's 
course  are  so  governed,  in  college  or  otherwise, 
as  to  insure  and  develop  the  delicate  and  strong 
response  of  all  his  bodily  senses,  at  the  time  of 
his  life  when  nature  decrees  that  his  senses 
must  be  developed,  that  the  spirit  must  be 
waked  in  them,  or  not  at  all,  the  study  of 
Walter  Pater  will  be  in  vain. 

The  physical  organisation,  the  mere  bodily 
state  of  the  pupil,  necessary  to  appreciate  either 
the  form  or  the  substance  of  a  bit  of  writing 
like  The  Child  in  the  House,  is  the  first  thing  a 
true  teacher  is  concerned  with.  A  college 
graduate  whose  nostrils  have  not  been  trained 
for  years, — steeped  in  the  great,  still  delights 
of  the  ground, — who  has  not  learned  the  spirit 
and  fragrance  of  the  soil  beneath  his  feet,  is  not 
a  sufficiently  cultivated  person  to  pronounce 
judgment  either  upon  Walter  Pater's  style  or 
upon  his  definition  of  style. 

To  be  educated  in  the  great  literatures  of 
the  world  is  to  be  trained  in  the  drawing  out 
in  one's  own  body  and  mind  of  the  physical 
and  mental  powers  of  those  who  write  great 
literatures.  Culture  is  the  feeling  of  the  in- 
duced current — the  thrill  of  the  lives  of  the 


ttbe 

Organs  of 
literature 


162 


%ost  Hrt  ot 


Ube 

Organs  of 
literature 


dead — the  charging  the  nerves  of  the  body 
and  powers  of  the  spirit  with  the  genius  that 
has  walked  the  earth  before  us.  In  the  bor- 
rowed glories  of  the  great  for  one  swift  and 
passing  page  we  walk  before  heaven  with 
them,  breathe  the  long  breath  of  the  centuries 
with  them,  know  the  joy  of  the  gods  and  live. 
The  man  of  genius  is  the  man  who  literally 
gives  himself.  He  makes  every  man  a  man 
of  genius  for  the  time  being.  He  exchanges 
souls  with  us  and  for  one  brief  moment  we  are 
great,  we  are  beautiful,  we  are  immortal.  We 
are  visited  with  our  possible  selves.  Literature 
is  the  transfiguring  of  the  senses  in  which  men 
are  dwelling  every  day  and  of  the  thoughts  of 
the  mind  in  which  they  are  living  every  day. 
It  is  the  commingling  of  one's  life  in  one  vast 
network  of  sensibility,  communion,  and  eternal 
comradeship  with  all  the  joy  and  sorrow,  taste, 
odor,  and  sound,  passion  of  men  and  love  of 
women  and  worship  of  God,  that  ever  has  been 
on  the  earth,  since  the  watching  of  the  first 
night  above  the  earth,  or  since  the  look  of  the 
first  morning  on  it,  when  it  was  loved  for  the 
first  time  by  a  human  life. 

The  artist  is  recognised  as  an  artist  in  pro- 
portion as  the  senses  of  his  body  drift  their 
glow  and  splendour  over  into  the  creations  of 
his  mind.  He  is  an  artist  because  his  flesh  is 
informed  with  the  spirit,  because  in  whatever 
he  does  he  incarnates  the  spirit  in  the  flesh. 

The  gentle,  stroking  delight  in  this  universe 


©rgans  of  ^Literature 


163 


that  Dr.  Holmes  took  all  his  days,  his  con- 
tagious gladness  in  it  and  approval  of  it,  his 
impressionableness  to  its  moods — its  Oliver- 
Wendell  ones, — who  really  denies  in  his  soul 
that  this  capacity  of  Dr.  Holmes  to  enjoy,  this 
delicate,  ceaseless  tasting  with  sense  and  spirit 
of  the  essence  of  life,  was  the  very  substance 
of  his  culture  ?  The  books  that  he  wrote  and 
the  things  that  he  knew  were  merely  the  form 
of  it.  His  power  of  expression  was  the  blend- 
ing of  sense  and  spirit  in  him,  and  because  his 
mind  was  trained  into  the  texture  of  his  body 
people  delighted  in  his  words  in  form  and  spirit 
both. 

There  is  no  training  in  the  art  of  expression 
or  study  of  those  who  know  how  to  express, 
that  shall  not  consist,  not  in  a  pupil's  knowing 
wherein  the  power  of  a  book  lies,  but  in  his 
experiencing  the  power  himself,  in  his  entering 
the  life  behind  the  book  and  the  habit  of  life 
that  made  writing  such  a  book  and  reading  it 
possible.  This  habit  is  the  habit  of  incarna- 
tion. 

A  true  and  classic  book  is  always  the  history 
some  human  soul  has  had  in  its  tent  of  flesh, 
camped  out  beneath  the  stars,  groping  for  the 
thing  they  shine  to  us,  trying  to  find  a  body 
for  it.  In  the  great  wide  plain  of  wonder  there 
they  sing  the  wonder  a  little  time  to  us,  if  we 
listen.  Then  they  pass  on  to  it.  literature 
is  but  the  faint  echo  tangled  in  thousands  of 
years,  of  this  mighty,  lonely  singing  of  theirs, 


Ube 

Organs  of 
literature 


164 


Xost  Hrt  of 


Entrance 

Eramius 
ations  in 


under  the  Dome  of  lyife,  in  the  presence  of  the 
things  that  books  are  about.  The  power  to 
read  a  great  book  is  the  power  to  glory  in  these 
things,  and  to  use  that  glory  every  day  to  do 
one's  living  and  reading  with.  Knowing  what 
is  in  the  book  may  be  called  learning,  but  the 
test  of  culture  always  is  that  it  will  not  be  con- 
tent with  knowledge  unless  it  is  inward  know- 
ledge. Inward  knowledge  is  the  knowledge 
that  comes  to  us  from  behind  the  book,  from 
living  for  weeks  with  the  author  until  his  habits 
have  become  our  habits,  until  God  Himself, 
through  days  and  nights  and  deeds  and  dreams, 
has  blended  our  souls  together. 

IV 

Entrance  Examinations  in  309 

If  entrance  examinations  in  joy  were  re- 
quired at  our  representative  colleges  very  few 
of  the  pupils  who  are  prepared  for  college  in 
the  ordinary  way  would  be  admitted.  What  is 
more  serious  than  this,  the  honour-pupils  in 
the  colleges  themselves  at  commencement  time 
— those  who  have  submitted  most  fully  to  the 
college  requirements  —  would  take  a  lower 
stand  in  a  final  examination  in  joy,  whether 
of  sense  or  spirit,  than  any  others  in  the  class. 
Their  education  has  not  consisted  in  the  acquir- 
ing of  a  state  of  being,  a  condition  of  organs,  a 
capacity  of  tasting  life,  of  creating  and  sharing 


Entrance  Examinations  in 


165 


the  joys  and  meanings  in  it.  Their  learning 
has  largely  consisted  in  the  fact  that  they  have 
learned  at  last  to  let  their  joys  go.  They  have 
become  the  most  satisfactory  of  scholars,  not 
because  of  their  power  of  knowing,  but  because 
of  their  willingness  to  be  powerless  in  knowing. 
When  they  have  been  drilled  to  know  without 
joy,  have  become  the  day-labourers  of  learn- 
ing, they  are  given  diplomas  for  cheerlessness, 
and  are  sent  forth  into  the  world  as  teachers  of 
the  young.  Almost  any  morning,  in  almost 
any  town  or  city  beneath  the  sun,  you  can  see 
them,  Gentle  Reader,  with  the  children, spread- 
ing their  tired  minds  and  their  tired  bodies 
over  all  the  fresh  and  buoyant  knowledge  of 
the  earth.  Knowledge  that  has  not  been 
throbbed  in  cannot  be  throbbed  out.  The 
graduates  of  the  colleges  for  women  (in  The 
Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae)  have  seri- 
ously discussed  the  question  whether  the  col- 
lege course  in  literature  made  them  nearer  or 
farther  from  creating  literature  themselves. 
The  Editor  of  Harper's  Monthly  has  recorded 
that ' '  the  spontaneity  and  freedom  of  subjective 
construction  "  in  certain  American  authors  was 
only  made  possible,  probably,  by  their  having 
escaped  an  early  academic  training.  The  Cen- 
tury Magazine  has  been  so  struck  with  the  fact 
that  hardly  a  single  writer  of  original  power 
before  the  public  has  been  a  regular  college 
graduate  that  it  has  offered  special  prizes  and 
inducements  for  any  form  of  creative  literature 


Entrance 

3£jamin= 
aliens  in 


i66 


%ost  act  ot 


Entrance 

Eramins 
atione  in 


— poem,  story,  or  essay — that  a  college  gradu- 
ate could  write. 

If  a  teacher  of  literature  desires  to  remove 
his  subject  from  the  uncreative  methods  he 
finds  in  use  around  him,  he  can  only  do  so 
successfully  by  persuading  trustees  and  college 
presidents  that  literature  is  an  art  and  that  it 
can  only  be  taught  through  the  methods  and 
spirit  and  conditions  that  belong  to  art.  If  he 
succeeds  in  persuading  trustees  and  presidents, 
he  will  probably  find  that  faculties  are  not  per- 
suaded, and  that,  in  the  typical  Germanised 
institution  of  learning  at  least,  any  work  he 
may  choose  to  do  in  the  spirit  and  method  of 
joy  will  be  looked  upon  by  the  larger  part  of 
his  fellow  teachers  as  superficial  and  pleasant. 
Those  who  do  not  feel  that  it  is  superficial  and 
pleasant,  who  grant  that  working  for  a  state 
of  being  is  the  most  profound  and  worthy  and 
strenuous  work  a  teacher  can  do, — that  it  is 
what  education  is  for, — will  feel  that  it  is  im- 
practicable. It  is  thus  that  it  has  come  to  pass 
in  the  average  institution  of  learning,  that  if 
a  teacher  does  not  know  what  education  is,  he 
regards  education  as  superficial,  and  if  he  does 
know  what  education  is,  he  regards  education 
as  impossible. 

It  is  not  intended  to  be  dogmatic,  but  it  may 
be  worth  while  to  state  from  the  pupil's  point 
of  view  and  from  memory  what  kind  of  teacher 
a  college  student  who  is  really  interested  in 
literature  would  like  to  have. 


Entrance  Examinations  in 


167 


Given  a  teacher  of  literature  who  has  carte 
blanche  from  the  other  teachers — the  authorities 
around  him  —  and  from  the  trustees  —  the 
authorities  over  him, — what  kind  of  a  stand 
will  he  find  it  best  to  take,  if  he  proposes  to 
give  his  pupils  an  actual  knowledge  of  litera- 
ture? 

In  the  first  place,  he  will  stand  on  the  general 
principle  that  if  a  pupil  is  to  have  an  actual 
knowledge  of  literature  as  literature,  he  must 
experience  literature  as  an  art. 

In  the  second  place,  if  he  is  to  teach  litera- 
ture to  his  pupils  as  an  art  to  be  mastered,  he 
will  begin  his  teaching  as  a  master.  Instead 
of  his  pupils'  determining  that  they  will  elect 
him,  he  will  elect  them.  If  there  is  to  be  any 
candidating,  he  will  see  that  the  candidating 
is  properly  placed ;  that  the  privilege  at  least  of 
the  first-class  music  master,  dancing  master, 
and  teacher  of  painting — the  choosing  of  his 
own  pupils — is  accorded  to  him.  Inasmuch  as 
the  power  and  value  of  his  class  must  always 
depend  upon  him,  he  will  not  allow  either  the 
size  or  the  character  of  his  classes  to  be  deter- 
mined by  a  catalogue,  or  by  the  examinations 
of  other  persons,  or  by  the  advertising  facili- 
ties of  the  college.  If  actual  results  are  to  be 
achieved  in  his  pupils,  it  can  only  be  by  his 
governing  the  conditions  of  their  work  and  by 
keeping  these  conditions  at  all  times  in  his  own 
hands. 

In  the  third  place,  he  will  see  that  his  class 


Entrance 
Eramina 
aliens  in 


i68 


OLost  Hrt  ot  IReafcing 


Entrance 


ations  in 

302 


is  so  conducted  that  out  of  a  hundred  who  de- 
sire to  belong  to  it  the  best  ten  only  will  be 
able  to. 

In  the  fourth  place,  he  will  himself  not  only 
determine  which  are  the  best  ten,  but  he  will 
make  this  determination  on  the  one  basis  pos- 
sible for  a  teacher  of  art — the  basis  of  mutual 
attraction  among  the  pupils.  He  will  take  his 
stand  on  the  spiritual  principle  that  if  classes 
are  to  be  vital  classes,  it  is  not  enough  that  the 
pupils  should  elect  the  teacher,  but  the  teacher 
and  pupils  must  elect  each  other.  The  basis 
of  an  art  is  the  mutual  attraction  that  exists 
between  things  that  belong  together.  The 
basis  for  transmitting  an  art  to  other  persons 
is  the  natural  attraction  that  exists  between 
persons  that  belong  together.  The  more 
mutual  the  attraction  is, — complementary  or 
otherwise, — the  more  condensed  and  power- 
ful teaching  can  it  be  made  the  conductor  of. 
If  a  hundred  candidates  offer  themselves,  fifty 
will  be  rejected  because  the  attraction  is  not 
mutual  enough  to  insure  swift  and  permanent 
results.  Out  of  fifty,  forty  will  be  rejected 
probably  for  the  sake  of  ten  with  whom  the 
mutual  attraction  is  so  great  that  great  things 
cannot  help  being  accomplished  by  it. 

The  thorough  and  contagious  teacher  of 
literature  will  hold  his  power — the  power  of 
conveying  the  current  and  mood  of  art  to 
others — as  a  public  trust.  He  owes  it  to  the 
institution  in  which  he  is  placed  to  refuse  to 


Entrance  Examinations  in 


169 


surround  himself  with  non-conductors;  and 
inasmuch  as  his  power — such  as  it  is — is  in- 
stinctive power,  it  will  be  placed  where  it  in- 
stinctively counts  the  most.  In  proportion  as 
he  loves  his  art  and  loves  his  kind  and  desires 
to  get  them  on  speaking  terms  with  each  other, 
he  will  devote  himself  to  selected  pupils,  to 
those  with  whom  he  will  throw  the  least  away. 
His  service  to  others  will  be  to  give  to  these 
such  real,  inspired,  and  reproductive  know- 
ledge, that  it  shall  pass  on  from  them  to  others 
of  its  own  inherent  energy.  From  the  nar- 
rower— that  is,  the  less  spiritual — point  of  view, 
it  has  seemed  perhaps  a  selfish  and  aristocratic 
thing  for  a  teacher  to  make  distinctions  in  per- 
sons in  the  conduct  of  his  work,  but  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  progress  of  the  world,  it  is 
heartless  and  sentimental  to  do  otherwise ;  and 
without  exception  all  of  the  most  successful 
teachers  in  all  of  the  arts  have  been  successful 
quite  as  much  through  a  kind  of  dictatorial  in- 
sight in  selecting  the  pupils  they  could  teach, 
as  in  selecting  the  things  they  could  teach 
them. 

In  the  fifth  place,  having  determined  to 
choose  his  pupils  himself,  the  selection  will  be 
determined  by  processes  of  his  own  choosing. 
These  processes,  whatever  form  or  lack  of  form 
they  may  take,  will  serve  to  convey  to  the 
teacher  the  main  knowledge  he  desires.  They 
will  be  an  examination  in  the  capacity  of  joy 
in  the  pupil.  Inasmuch  as  surplus  joy  in  a 


Entrance 
Examine 
ations  in 


170 


SLost  Bet  of 


Entrance 
jeyamfns 
aliens  in 


pupil  is  the  most  promising  thing  he  can  have, 
the  sole  secret  of  any  ability  he  may  ever  attain 
of  learning  literature,  the  basis  of  all  discipline, 
it  will  be  the  first  thing  the  teacher  takes  into 
account.  While  it  is  obvious  that  an  examina- 
tion in  joy  could  not  be  conducted  in  any  set 
fashion,  every  great  joy  in  the  world  has  its 
natural  diviners  and  experts,  and  teachers  of 
literature  who  know  its  joy  have  plenty  of 
ways  of  divining  this  joy  in  others. 

In  the  sixth  place,  pupils  will  be  dropped 
and  promoted  by  a  teacher,  in  such  a  class  as 
has  been  described,  according  to  the  spirit 
and  force  and  creativeness  of  their  daily  work. 
Promotion  will  be  by  elimination — that  is,  the 
pupil  will  stay  where  he  is  and  the  class  will 
be  made  smaller  for  him.  The  superior  natural 
force  of  each  pupil  will  have  full  sway  in  deter- 
mining his  share  of  the  teacher's  force.  As 
this  force  belongs  most  to  those  who  waste  it 
least,  if  five  tenths  of  the  appreciation  in  a 
class  belongs  to  one  pupil,  five  tenths  of  the 
teacher  belongs  to  him,  and  promotion  is  most 
truly  effected,  not  by  giving  the  best  pupils  a 
new  teacher,  but  by  giving  them  more  of  the 
old  one.  A  teacher's  work  can  only  be  suc- 
cessful in  proportion  as  it  is  accurately  indi- 
vidual and  puts  each  pupil  in  the  place  he  was 
made  to  fit. 

In  the  seventh  place,  the  select  class  will  be 
selected  by  the  teacher  as  a  baseball  captain 
selects  his  team:  not  as  being  the  nine  best 


IRatural  Selection  In 


171 


men,  but  as  being  the  nine  men  who  most  call 
each  other  out,  and  make  the  best  play  to- 
gether. If  the  teacher  selects  his  class  wisely, 
the  principle  of  his  selection  sometimes — from 
the  outside,  at  least — will  seem  no  principle  at 
all.  The  class  must  have  its  fool,  for  instance, 
and  pupils  must  be  selected  for  useful  defects 
as  well  as  for  virtues.  Belonging  to  such  a 
class  will  not  be  allowed  to  have  a  stiff,  definite, 
water-metre  meaning  in  it,  with  regard  to  the 
capacity  of  a  pupil.  It  will  only  be  known 
that  he  is  placed  in  the  class  for  some  quality, 
fault,  or  inspiration  in  him  that  can  be  brought 
to  bear  on  the  state  of  being  in  the  class  in 
such  a  way  as  to  produce  results,  not  only  for 
himself  but  for  all  concerned. 


•Natural 
Selection 
in  Ubeoc? 


IRatural  Selection  in 


The  conditions  just  stated  as  necessary  for 
the  vital  teaching  of  literature  narrow  them- 
selves down,  for  the  most  part,  to  the  very 
simple  and  common  principle  of  life  and  art, 
the  principle  of  natural  selection. 

As  an  item  in  current  philosophy  the  prin- 
ciple of  natural  selection  meets  with  general 
acceptance.  It  is  one  of  those  pleasant  and 
instructive  doctrines  which,  when  applied  to  ex- 
isting institutions,  is  opposed  at  once  as  a  sensa- 
tional, visionary,  and  revolutionary  doctrine. 


172 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaofna 


•natural 
Selection 


There  are  two  most  powerful  objections  to 
the  doctrine  of  natural  selection  in  education. 
One  of  these  is  the  scholastic  objection  and  the 
other  is  the  religious  one. 

The  scholastic  objection  is  that  natural  se- 
lection in  education  is  impracticable.  It  can- 
not be  made  to  operate  mechanically,  or  for 
large  numbers,  and  it  interferes  with  nearly 
all  of  the  educational  machinery  for  hammer- 
ing heads  in  rows,  which  we  have  at  command 
at  present.  Even  if  the  machinery  could  be 
stopped  and  natural  selection  could  be  given 
the  place  that  belongs  to  it,  all  success  in  act- 
ing on  it  would  call  for  hand-made  teachers; 
and  hand-made  teachers  are  not  being  pro- 
duced when  we  have  nothing  but  machines  to 
produce  them  with.  The  scholastic  objection 
— that  natural  selection  in  education  is  im- 
practicable under  existing  conditions— is  ob- 
viously well  taken.  As  it  cannot  be  answered, 
it  had  best  be  taken,  perhaps,  as  a  recommen- 
dation. 

The  religious  objection  to  natural  selection 
in  education  is  not  that  it  is  impracticable,  but 
that  it  is  wicked.  It  rests  its  case  on  the  de- 
fence of  the  weak. 

But  the  question  at  issue  is  not  whether  the 
weak  shall  be  served  and  defended  or  whether 
they  shall  not.  We  all  would  serve  and  de- 
fend the  weak.  If  a  teacher  feels  that  he  can 
serve  his  inferior  pupils  best  by  making  his 
superior  pupils  inferior  too,  it  is  probable  that 


Natural  Selection  in  tTbeorg 


'73 


he  had  better  do  it,  and  that  he  will  know  how 
to  do  it,  and  that  he  will  know  how  to  do  it 
better  than  any  one  else.  There  are  many 
teachers,  however,  who  have  the  instinctive 
belief,  and  who  act  on  it  so  far  as  they  are 
allowed  to,  that  to  take  the  stand  that  the  in- 
ferior pupil  must  be  defended  at  the  expense 
of  the  superior  pupil  is  to  take  a  sentimental 
stand.  It  is  not  a  stand  in  favour  of  the  in- 
ferior pupil,  but  against  him. 

The  best  way  to  respect  an  inferior  pupil  is 
to  keep  him  in  place.  The  more  he  is  kept  in 
place,  the  more  his  powers  will  be  called  upon. 
If  he  is  in  the  place  above  him,  he  may  see 
much  that  he  would  not  see  otherwise,  much 
at  which  he  will  wonder,  perhaps;  but  he  de- 
serves to  be  treated  spiritually  and  thoroughly, 
to  be  kept  where  he  will  be  creative,  where  his 
wondering  will  be  to  the  point,  both  at  once 
and  eventually. 

It  is  a  law  that  holds  as  good  in  the  life  of  a 
teacher  of  literature  as  it  does  in  the  lives  of 
makers  of  literature.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  the  world  at  large,  the  author  who  can  do 
anything  else  has  no  right  to  write  for  the 
average  man.  There  are  plenty  of  people  who 
cannot  help  writing  for  him.  Let  them  do  it. 
It  is  their  right  and  the  world's  right  that  they 
should  be  the  ones  to  do  it.  It  is  the  place  that 
belongs  to  them,  and  why  should  nearly  every 
man  we  have  of  the  more  seeing  kind  to-day 
deliberately  compete  with  men  who  cannot 


•natural 
Selection 


174 


3Lost  art  of  IReaoina 


•natural 
Selection 


compete  with  him  ?  The  man  who  abandons 
the  life  that  belongs  to  him, — the  life  that 
would  not  exist  in  the  world  if  he  did  not  live 
it  and  keep  it  existing  in  the  world,  and  who 
does  it  to  help  his  inferiors,  does  not  help  his 
inferiors.  He  becomes  their  rival.  He  crowds 
them  out  of  their  lives.  There  could  not  pos- 
sibly be  a  more  noble,  or  more  exact  and 
spiritual  law  of  progress  than  this — that  every 
man  should  take  his  place  in  human  society 
and  do  his  work  in  it  with  his  nearest  spiritual 
neighbours.  These  nearest  spiritual  neigh- 
bours are  a  part  of  the  economy  of  the  universe. 
They  are  now  and  always  have  been  the  natural 
conductors  over  the  face  of  the  earth  of  all 
actual  power  in  it.  It  has  been  through  the 
grouping  of  the  nearest  spiritual  neighbours 
around  the  world  that  men  have  unfailingly 
found  the  heaven-appointed,  world-remoulding 
teachers  of  every  age. 

It  does  not  sound  very  much  like  Thomas 
Jefferson, — and  it  is  to  be  admitted  that  there 
are  certain  lines  in  our  first  great  national 
document  which,  read  on  the  run  at  least,  may 
seem  to  deny  it, —  but  the  living  spirit  of 
Thomas  Jefferson  does  not  teach  that  amputa- 
tion is  progress,  nor  does  true  Democracy 
admit  either  the  patriotism  or  the  religion  of 
a  man  who  feels  that  his  legs  must  be  cut  off 
to  run  to  the  assistance  of  neighbours  whose 
legs  are  cut  off.  An  educational  Democracy 
which  expects  a  pupil  to  be  less  than  himself 


natural  Selection  in  practice 


175 


for  the  benefit  of  other  pupils  is  a  mock  De- 
mocracy, and  it  is  the  very  essence  of  a  De- 
mocracy of  the  truer  kind  that  it  expects  every 
man  in  it  to  be  more  than  himself.  And  if  a 
man's  religion  is  of  the  truer  kind,  it  will  not 
be  heard  telling  him  that  he  owes  it  to  God 
and  the  Average  Man  to  be  less  than  himself. 

VI 

Natural  Selection  in  practice 

It  is  not  going  to  be  possible  very  much 
longer  to  take  it  for  granted  that  natural  selec- 
tion is  a  somewhat  absent-minded  and  heathen 
habit  that  God  has  fallen  into  in  the  natural 
world,  and  uses  in  his  dealings  with  men,  but 
that  it  is  not  a  good  enough  law  for  men  to 
use  in  their  dealings  with  one  another. 

The  main  thing  that  science  has  done  in  the 
last  fifty  years,  in  spite  of  conventional  religion 
and  so-called  scholarship,  has  been  to  bring  to 
pass  in  men  a  respect  for  the  natural  world. 
The  next  thing  that  is  to  be  brought  to  pass — 
also  in  spite  of  conventional  religion  and  so- 
called  scholarship — is  the  self-respect  of  the 
natural  man  and  of  the  instincts  of  human 
nature.  The  self-respect  of  the  natural  man, 
when  once  he  gains  it,  is  a  thing  that  is  bound 
to  take  care  of  itself,  and  take  care  of  the  man, 
and  take  care  of  everything  that  is  important 
to  the  man. 


Natural 
Selection 
in  practice 


i76 


%ost  Hrt  of  1Reaoin0 


Ylatural 
Selection 
in  practice 


Inasmuch  as,  in  the  long  run  at  least,  educa- 
tion, even  in  times  of  its  not  being  human, 
interests  humanity  more  than  anything  else,  a 
most  important  consequence  of  the  self-respect 
of  the  natural  man  is  going  to  be  an  uprising, 
all  over  the  world,  of  teachers  who  believe 
something.  The  most  important  consequence 
of  having  teachers  who  believe  something  will 
be  a  wholesale  and  uncompromising  rearrange- 
ment of  nearly  all  our  systems  and  methods  of 
education.  Instead  of  being  arranged  to  cow 
the  teacher  with  routine,  to  keep  teachers  from 
being  human  beings,  and  to  keep  their  pupils 
from  finding  it  out  if  they  are  human  beings, 
they  will  be  arranged  on  the  principle  that  the 
whole  object  of  knowledge  is  the  being  of  a 
human  being,  and  the  only  way  to  know  any- 
thing worth  knowing  in  the  world  is  to  begin 
by  knowing  how  to  be  a  human  being — and  by 
liking  it. 

Not  until  our  current  education  is  based 
throughout  on  expecting  great  things  of  human 
nature  instead  of  secretly  despising  it,  can  it 
truly  be  called  education.  Expectancy  is  the 
very  essence  of  education.  Actions  not  only 
speak  louder  than  words,  they  make  words  as 
though  they  were  not;  and  so  long  as  our 
teachers  confine  themselves  to  saying  beautiful 
and  literary  things  about  the  instincts  of  the 
human  heart,  and  do  not  trust  their  own  in- 
stincts in  their  daily  teaching,  and  the  instincts 
of  their  pupils,  and  do  not  make  this  trust  the 


natural  Selection  in  practice 


177 


foundation  of  all  their  work,  the  more  they 
educate  the  more  they  destroy.  The  destruc- 
tion is  both  ways,  and  whatever  the  subjects 
are  they  may  choose  to  know,  murder  and  sui- 
cide are  the  branches  they  teach. 

The  chief  characteristic  of  the  teacher  of  the 
future  is  going  to  be  that  he  will  dare  to  believe 
in  himself,  and  that  he  will  divine  some  one 
thing  to  believe  in,  in  everybody  else,  and  that, 
trusting  the  laws  of  human  nature,  he  will  go 
to  work  on  this  some  one  thing,  and  work  out 
from  it  to  everything.  Inasmuch  as  the  chief 
working  principle  of  human  nature  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  natural  selection,  the  entire  method 
of  the  teacher  of  the  future  will  be  based  on 
his  faith  in  natural  selection.  All  such  teach- 
ing as  he  attempts  to  do  will  be  worked  out 
from  the  temperamental,  involuntary,  primitive 
choices  of  his  own  being,  both  in  persons  and 
in  subject.  His  power  with  his  classes  will  be 
his  power  of  divining  the  free  and  unconscious 
and  primitive  choices  of  individual  pupils  in 
persons  and  subjects. 

Half  of  the  battle  is  already  won.  The 
principle  of  natural  selection  between  pupils 
and  subjects  is  recognised  in  the  elective  sys- 
tem, but  we  have  barely  commenced  to  con- 
ceive as  yet  the  principle  of  natural  selection 
in  its  more  important  application — mutual  at- 
traction between  teacher  and  pupil — natural 
selection  in  its  deeper  and  more  powerful  and 
spiritual  sense;  the  kind  of  natural  selection 


Datura! 
Selection 
in  practice 


i78 


%ost  Hrt  ot 


•natural 
Selection 
in  practice 


that  makes  the  teacher  a  worker  in  wonder, 
and  education  the  handiwork  of  God. 

In  most  of  our  great  institutions  we  do  not 
believe  in  even  the  theory  of  this  deeper  natural 
selection;  and  if  we  do  believe  in  it,  sitting  in 
endowed  chairs  under  the  Umbrella  of  Endowed 
Ideas,  how  can  we  act  on  that  belief?  And  if 
we  do,  who  will  come  out  and  act  with  us  ?  If 
it  does  not  seem  best  for  even  the  single  teacher, 
doing  his  teaching  unattached  and  quite  by 
himself,  to  educate  in  the  open, — to  trust  his 
own  soul  and  the  souls  of  his  pupils  to  the 
nature  of  things,  how  much  less  shall  the  great 
institution,  with  its  crowds  of  teachers  and  its 
rows  of  pupils  and  its  Vested  Funds  be  expected 
to  lay  itself  open — lay  its  teachers  and  pupils 
and  its  Vested  Funds  open — to  the  nature  of 
things?  We  are  suspicious  of  the  nature  of 
things.  God  has  concealed  a  lie  in  them.  We 
do  not  believe.  Therefore  we  cannot  teach. 

The  conclusion  is  inevitable.  As  long  as  we 
believe  in  natural  selection  between  pupil  and 
subject,  but  do  not  believe  in  natural  selection 
between  pupil  and  teacher,  no  great  results  in 
education  or  in  teaching  a  vital  relation  to 
books  or  to  anything  else  will  be  possible.  As 
long  as  natural  selection  between  pupil  and 
teacher  is  secretly  regarded  as  an  irreligious 
and  selfish  instinct,  with  which  a  teacher  must 
have  nothing  to  do,  instead  of  a  divine  ordi- 
nance, a  Heaven-appointed  starting-point  for 
doing  everything,  the  average  routine  teacher 


IRatural  Selection  in  jpractice 


179 


in  the  conventional  school  and  college  will  con- 
tinue to  be  the  kind  of  teacher  he  is,  and  will 
continue  to  belong  to  what  seems  to  many,  at 
least,  the  sentimental  and  superstitious  and 
pessimistic  profession  he  belongs  to  now. 
Why  should  a  teacher  allow  himself  to  teach 
without  inspiration  in  the  one  profession  on 
the  earth  where,  between  the  love  of  God  and 
the  love  of  the  opening  faces,  inspiration — one 
would  say  —  could  hardly  be  missed?  Cer- 
tainly, if  it  was  ever  intended  that  artists 
should  be  in  the  world  it  was  intended  that 
teachers  should  be  artists.  And  why  should 
we  be  artisans  ?  If  we  cannot  be  artists,  if  we 
are  not  allowed  to  make  our  work  a  self-ex- 
pression, were  it  not  better  to  get  one's  living 
by  the  labour  of  one's  hands, — by  digging  in 
the  wonder  of  the  ground  ?  A  stone-crusher, 
as  long  as  one  works  one's  will  with  it,  makes 
it  say  something,  is  nearer  to  nature  than  a 
college.  "  I  would  rather  do  manual  labour 
with  my  hands  than  manual  labour  with  my 
soul,"  the  true  artist  is  saying  to-day,  and  a 
great  many  thousand  teachers  are  saying  it, 
and  thousands  more  who  would  like  to  teach. 
The  moment  that  teaching  ceases  to  be  a  trade 
and  becomes  a  profession  again,  these  thou- 
sands are  going  to  crowd  into  it.  Until  the 
artist- teachers  have  been  attracted  to  teaching, 
things  can  only  continue  as  they  are.  Young 
men  and  women  who  are  capable  of  teaching 
will  continue  to  do  all  that  they  can  not  to  get 


•natural 
Selection 
in  practice 


i8o 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


•natural 

Selection 

in  practice 


into  it ;  and  young  men  and  women  who  are 
capable  of  teaching,  and  who  are  still  trying  to 
teach,  will  continue  to  do  all  that  they  can  to 
get  out  of  it.  When  the  schools  of  America 
have  all  been  obliged,  like  the  city  of  Brooklyn, 
to  advertise  to  secure  even  poor  teachers,  we 
shall  begin  to  see  where  we  stand, — stop  our 
machinery  a  while  and  look  at  it. 

The  only  way  out  is  the  return  to  nature,  and 
to  faith  in  the  freedom  of  nature.  Not  until 
the  teacher  of  the  young  has  dared  to  return 
to  nature,  has  won  the  emancipation  of  his  own 
instincts  and  the  emancipation  of  the  instincts 
of  his  pupils,  can  we  expect  anything  better 
than  we  have  now  of  either  of  them.  Not  until 
the  modern  teacher  has  come  to  the  point  where 
he  deliberately  works  with  his  instincts,  where 
he  looks  upon  himself  as  an  artist  working  in 
the  subject  that  attracts  him  most,  and  in  the 
material  that  is  attracted  to  him  most,  can  we 
expect  to  secure  in  our  crowded  conditions  to- 
day enough  teaching  to  go  around.  The  one 
practical  and  economical  way  to  make  our 
limited  supply  of  passion  and  thought  cover 
the  ground  is  to  be  spiritual  and  spontaneous 
and  thorough  with  what  we  have.  The  one 
practical  and  economical  way  to  do  this  is  to 
leave  things  free,  to  let  the  natural  forces  in 
men's  lives  find  the  places  that  belong  to  them, 
develop  the  powers  that  belong  to  them,  until 
power  in  every  man's  life  shall  be  contagious 
of  power.  In  the  meantime,  having  brought 


Batural  Selection  in  practice 


181 


out  the  true  and  vital  energies  of  men  as  far  as 
we  go,  if  we  are  obliged  to  be  specialists  in 
knowledge  we  shall  be  specialists  of  the  larger 
sort.  The  powers  of  each,  man,  being  actual 
and  genuine  powers,  shall  play  into  the  powers 
of  other  men.  Each  man  that  essays  to  live 
shall  create  for  us  a  splendour  and  beauty  and 
strength  he  was  made  to  create  from  the  be- 
ginning of  the  world. 

To  those  who  sit  in  the  seat  of  the  scornful 
the  somewhat  lyrical  idea  of  an  examination  in 
joy  as  a  basis  of  admission  to  the  typical  college 
appeals  as  a  fit  subject  of  laughter.  So  it  is. 
Having  admitted  the  laugh,  the  question  is, — 
all  human  life  is  questioning  the  college  to-day, 
— which  way  shall  the  laugh  point  ? 

If  the  conditions  of  the  typical  college  do  not 
allow  for  the  working  of  the  laws  of  nature,  so 
much  the  worse  for  the  laws  of  nature,  or  so 
much  the  worse  for  the  college.  In  the  mean- 
time, it  is  good  to  record  that  there  are  many 
signs — thanks  to  these  same  laws  of  nature — 
that  a  most  powerful  reaction  is  setting  in,  not 
only  in  the  colleges  themselves,  but  in  all  the 
forces  of  culture  outside  and  around  them. 
The  examination  in  joy — the  test  of  natural  se- 
lection— is  already  employed  by  all  celebrated 
music  masters  the  world  over  in  the  choosing 
of  pupils,  and  by  all  capable  teachers  of  paint- 
ing; and  the  time  is  not  far  off  when,  so  far  as 
courses  in  literature  are  concerned  (if  the 
teaching  of  literature  is  attempted  in  crowded 


•natural 
Selection 
in  practice 


182 


'Host  Hrt  of  IReaoing 


Cbc 
Emandpa 

alien 
oftbe 

"Ccacber 


institutions),  the  examination  in  joy  will  be  the 
determining  factor  with  all  the  best  teachers, 
not  only  in  the  conduct  of  their  classes,  but  in 
the  very  structure  of  them.  Structure  is  the 
basis  of  conduct. 

VII 


Emancipation  of  tbe  Geacber 


The  custom  of  mowing  lawns  in  cities,  of 
having  every  grass-blade  in  every  door-yard 
like  every  other  grass-blade,  is  considered  by 
many  persons  as  an  artificial  custom  —  a  viola- 
tion of  the  law  of  nature.  It  is  contended  that 
the  free-swinging,  wind-blown  grasses  of  the 
fields  are  more  beautiful  and  that  they  give 
more  various  and  infinite  delight  in  colour  and 
line  and  movement.  If  a  piece  of  this  same 
field,  however,  could  be  carefully  cut  out  and 
moved  and  fitted  to  a  city  door-yard  —  bobolinks 
and  daisies  and  shadows  and  all,  precisely  as 
they  are  —  it  would  not  be  beautiful.  Long 
grass  conforms  to  a  law  of  nature  where  nature 
has  room,  and  short  grass  conforms  to  a  law  of 
nature  where  nature  has  not  room. 

When,  for  whatever  reason,  of  whatever  im- 
portance, men  and  women  choose  to  be  so  close 
together,  that  it  is  not  fitting  they  should  have 
freedom,  and  when  they  choose  to  have  so 
little  room  to  live  in  that  development  is  not 
fitting  lest  it  should  inconvenience  others,  the 


Ube  Emancipation  of  tbe  Ueacber 


183 


penalty  follows.  When  grass-blades  are 
crowded  between  walls  and  fences,  the  more 
they  can  be  made  to  look  alike  the  more  pleas- 
ing they  are,  and  when  an  acre  of  ground  finds 
itself  covered  with  a  thousand  people,  or  a 
teacher  of  culture  finds  himself  mobbed  with 
pupils,  the  law  of  nature  is  the  same.  When- 
ever crowding  of  any  kind  takes  place,  whether 
it  be  in  grass,  ideas,  or  human  nature,  the  most 
pleasing  as  well  as  the  most  convenient  and 
natural  way  of  producing  a  beautiful  effect  is 
with  the  L,awn  Mower.  The  dead  level  is  the 
logic  of  crowded  conditions.  The  city  grades 
down  its  hills  for  the  convenience  of  redu- 
cing its  sewer  problem.  It  makes  its  streets 
into  blocks  for  the  convenience  of  knowing 
where  every  home  is,  and  how  far  it  is,  by  a 
glance  at  a  page,  and,  in  order  that  the  human 
beings  in  it  (one  set  of  innumerable  nobodies 
hurrying  to  another  set  of  innumerable  no- 
bodies) may  never  be  made  to  turn  out  per- 
chance for  an  elm  on  a  sidewalk,  it  cuts  down 
centuries  of  trees,  and  then,  out  of  its  modern 
improvements,  its  map  of  life,  its  woods  in 
rows,  its  wheels  on  tracks,  and  its  souls  in 
pigeonholes  —  out  of  its  huge  Checker-board 
under  the  days  and  nights— it  lifts  its  eyes  to 
the  smoke  in  heaven,  at  last,  and  thanks  God 
it  is  civilised  ! 

The  substantial  fact  in  the  case  would  seem 
to  be  that  every  human  being  born  into  the 
world  has  a  right  to  be  treated  as  a  special 


Ube 

£mancips 
ation 
of  tbe 

Ueacber 


1 84 


Xost  Brt  of  TReaoina 


Ube 

Emandps 

ation 

of  tbe 

Ueacbet 


creation  all  by  himself.  Society  can  only  be 
said  to  be  truly  civilised  in  proportion  as  it 
acts  on  this  fact.  It  is  because  in  the  family 
each  being  is  treated  as  one  out  of  six  or  seven, 
and  in  the  school  as  one  out  of  six  hundred, 
that  the  family  (with  approximately  good 
parents)  comes  nearer  to  being  a  model  school 
than  anything  we  have. 

If  we  deliberately  prefer  to  live  in  crowds 
for  the  larger  part  of  our  lives,  we  must  expect 
our  lives  to  be  cut  and  fitted  accordingly.  It 
is  an  aesthetic  as  well  as  a  practical  law  that 
this  should  be  so.  The  law  of  nature  where 
there  is  room  for  a  man  to  be  a  man  is  not  the 
law  of  nature  where  there  is  not  room  for  him 
to  be  a  man.  If  there  is  no  playground  for  his 
individual  instincts  except  the  street  he  must 
give  them  up.  Inasmuch  as  natural  selection 
in  overcrowded  conditions  means  selecting 
things  by  taking  them  away  from  others,  it 
can  be  neither  beautiful  nor  useful  to  practise 
it. 

People  who  prefer  to  be  educated  in  masses 
must  conform  to  the  law  of  mass,  which  is  in- 
ertia, and  to  the  law  of  the  herd,  which  is  the 
Dog.  As  long  as  our  prevailing  idea  of  the 
best  elective  is  the  one  with  the  largest  class, 
and  the  prevailing  idea  of  culture  is  the  degree 
from  the  most  crowded  college,  all  natural  gifts, 
whether  in  teachers  or  pupils,  are  under  a 
penalty.  If  we  deliberately  place  ourselves 
where  everything  is  done  by  the  gross,  as  a 


Tlbe  Emancipation  of  tbe  TTeacber 


185 


matter  of  course  and  in  the  nature  of  things 
the  machine-made  man,  taught  by  the  machine- 
made  teacher,  in  a  teaching-machine,  will  con- 
tinue to  be  the  typical  scholar  of  the  modern 
world;  and  the  gentleman -scholar  —  the  man 
who  made  himself,  or  who  gave  God  a  chance 
to  make  him — will  continue  to  be  what  he  is 
now  in  most  of  our  large  teaching  communities 
— an  exception. 

Culture  which  has  not  the  power  to  win  the 
emancipation  of  its  teachers  does  not  produce 
emancipated  and  powerful  pupils.  The  essence 
of  culture  is  selection,  and  the  essence  of  se- 
lection is  natural  selection,  and  teachers  who 
have  not  been  educated  with  natural  selection 
cannot  teach  with  it.  Teachers  who  have 
given  up  being  individuals  in  the  main  activity 
of  their  lives,  who  are  not  allowed  to  be  indi- 
viduals in  their  teaching,  do  not  train  pupils  to 
be  individuals.  Their  pupils,  instead  of  being 
organic  human  beings,  are  manufactured  ones. 
Literary  drill  in  college  consists  in  drilling 
every  man  to  be  himself — in  giving  him  the 
freedom  of  himself.  Probably  it  would  be  ad- 
mitted by  most  of  us  who  are  college  graduates 
that  the  teachers  who  loom  up  in  our  lives 
are  those  whom  we  remember  as  emancipated 
teachers — men  who  dared  to  be  individuals  in 
their  daily  work,  and  who,  every  time  they 
touched  us,  helped  us  to  be  individuals. 


Ube 

Emanc(p= 

atfon 

of  tbe 

Ueacber 


i86 


OLost  Hrt  ot 


Ube  ITest 
of  Culture 


VIII 

Gest  of  Culture 


Looking  at  our  great  institutions  of  learning 
in  a  general  way,  one  might  be  inclined  to  feel 
that  literature  cannot  be  taught  in  them,  be- 
cause the  classes  are  too  large.  When  one 
considers,  however,  the  average  class  in  litera- 
ture, as  it  actually  is,  and  the  things  that  are 
being  taught  in  it,  it  becomes  obvious  that  the 
larger  such  a  class  can  be  made,  and  the  less  the 
pupil  can  be  made  to  get  out  of  it,  the  better. 

The  best  test  of  a  man's  knowledge  of  the 
Spanish  language  would  be  to  put  him  in 
a  balloon  and  set  him  down  in  dark  night 
in  the  middle  of  Spain  and  leave  him  there 
with  his  Spanish  words.  The  best  test  of  a 
man's  knowledge  of  books  is  to  see  what  he 
can  do  without  them  on  a  desert  island  in  the 
sea.  When  the  ship's  library  over  the  blue 
horizon  dwindles  at  last  in  its  cloud  of  smoke 
and  he  is  left  without  a  shred  of  printed  paper 
by  him,  the  supreme  opportunity  of  education 
will  come  to  him.  He  will  learn  how  vital  and 
beautiful,  or  boastful  and  empty,  his  education 
is.  If  it  is  true  education,  the  first  step  he 
takes  he  will  find  a  use  for  it.  The  first  bird 
that  floats  from  its  tree-top  shall  be  a  message 
from  London  straight  to  his  soul.  If  he  has 
truly  known  them,  the  spirits  of  all  his  books 
will  flock  to  him.  If  he  has  known  Shake- 


ZTbe  Uest  of  Culture 


187 


speare,  the  ghost  of  the  great  master  will  rise 
froin  beneath  its  Stratford  stone,  and  walk 
oceans  to  be  with  him.  If  he  knows  Homer, 
Homer  is  full  of  Odysseys  trooping  across  the 
seas.  Shall  he  sit  him  down  on  the  rocks,  lift 
his  voice  like  a  mere  librarian,  and,  like  a 
book-raised,  paper-pampered,  ink-hungry  babe 
cry  to  the  surf  for  a  Greek  dictionary  ?  The 
rhythm  of  the  beach  is  Greece  to  him,  and  the 
singing  of  the  great  Greek  voice  is  on  the  tops 
of  waves  around  the  world. 

A  man's  culture  is  his  knowledge  become 
himself.  It  is  in  the  seeing  of  his  eyes  and  the 
hearing  of  his  ears  and  the  use  of  his  hands. 
Is  there  not  always  the  altar  of  the  heavens 
and  the  earth  ?  Laying  down  days  and  nights 
of  joy  before  it  and  of  beauty  and  wonder  and 
peace,  the  scholar  is  always  a  scholar,  z.  e. ,  he 
is  always  at  home.  To  be  cultured  is  to  be  so 
splendidly  wrought  of  body  and  soul  as  to  get 
the  most  joy  out  of  the  least  and  the  fewest 
things.  Wherever  he  happens  to  be, — what- 
ever he  happens  to  be  without, — his  culture  is 
his  being  master.  He  may  be  naked  before 
the  universe,  and  it  may  be  a  pitiless  universe 
or  a  gracious  one,  but  he  is  always  master, 
knowing  how  to  live  in  it,  knowing  how  to 
hunger  and  die  in  it,  or,  like  Stevenson,  smiling 
out  of  his  poor,  worn  body  to  it.  He  is  the 
unconquerable  man.  Wherever  he  is  in  the 
world,  he  cannot  be  old  in  the  presence  of 
the  pageant  of  Life.  From  behind  the  fading 


•Cbe  "Ccst 
of  Culture 


1 88 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReafcing 


Summary  of  his  face  he  watches  it,  child  after  child, 
spring  after  spring  as  it  flies  before  him;  he 
will  not  grow  old  while  it  still  passes  by. 
It  carries  delight  across  to  him  to  the  end. 
He  watches  and  sings  with  it  to  the  end,  down 
to  the  edge  of  sleep. 

A  bird's  shadow  is  enough  to  be  happy  with, 
if  a  man  is  educated,  or  the  flicker  of  light  on  a 
leaf,  and  when  really  a  song  is  being  lived  in 
a  man,  all  nature  plays  its  accompaniment. 
To  possess  one's  own  senses,  to  know  how  to 
conduct  one's  self,  is  to  be  the  conductor  of 
orchestras  in  the  clouds  and  in  the  grass.  The 
trained  man  is  not  dependent  on  having  the 
thing  itself.  He  borrows  the  boom  of  the  sea 
to  live  with,  anywhere,  and  the  gladness  of 
continents. 

Literary  training  consists  in  the  acquiring  of 
a  state  of  mind  and  body  to  feel  the  universe 
with ;  in  becoming  an  athlete  toward  beauty,  a 
giver  of  great  lifts  of  joy  to  this  poor,  strain- 
ing, stumbling  world  with  its  immemorial  bur- 
den on  its  back,  which,  going  round  and  round, 
for  the  most  part  with  its  eyes  shut,  between 
infinities,  is  the  hope  and  sorrow  of  all  of  us 
for  the  very  reason  that  its  eyes  are  shut. 

IX 

Summary 

The  proper  conditions  for  literary  drill  in 
college  would  seem  to  sum  themselves  up  in 


Summary 


189 


the  general  idea  that  literature  is  the  spirit  of 
life.  It  can  therefore  only  be  taught  through 
the  spirit. 

First.  It  can  only  be  taught  through  the 
spirit  by  being  taught  as  an  art,  through  its 
own  nature  and  activity,  reproductively — giv- 
ing the  spirit  body.  Both  the  subject-matter 
and  the  method  in  true  literary  drill  can  only 
be  based  on  the  study  of  human  experience. 
The  intense  study  of  human  experience  in  a 
college  course  may  be  fairly  said  to  involve 
three  things  that  must  be  daily  made  possible 
to  the  pupil  in  college  life.  Everything  that  is 
given  him  to  do,  and  everything  that  happens 
to  him  in  college,  should  cultivate  these  three 
things  in  the  pupil:  (i)  Personality — an  in- 
tense first  person  singular,  as  a  centre  for 
having  experience;  (2)  Imagination  —  the  na- 
tural organ  in  the  human  soul  for  realising 
what  an  experience  is  and  for  combining  and 
condensing  it;  (3)  The  habit  of  having  time 
and  room,  for  re-experiencing  an  experience  at 
will  in  the  imagination,  until  the  experience 
becomes  so  powerful  and  vivid,  so  fully  realises 
itself  in  the  mind,  that  the  owner  of  the  mind 
is  an  artist  with  his  mind.  When  he  puts  the 
experience  of  his  mind  down  it  becomes  more 
real  to  other  men  on  paper  than  their  own  ex- 
periences are  to  them  in  their  own  lives. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  that  what- 
ever our  conventional  courses  in  literature  may 
be  doing,  whether  in  college  or  anywhere  else, 


Summary 


190 


Olost  Brt  ot 


Summary  they  are  not  bringing  out  this  creative  joy  and 
habit  of  creative  joy  in  the  pupils.  Those  who 
are  interested  in  literature-courses — such  as  we 
have — for  the  most  part  do  not  believe  in  try- 
ing to  bring  out  the  creative  joy  of  each  pupil. 
Those  who  might  believe  in  trying  to  do  it 
do  not  believe  it  can  be  done.  They  do  not 
believe  it  can  be  done  because  they  do  not 
realise  that  in  the  case  of  each  and  every  pupil 
— so  far  as  he  goes — it  is  the  only  thing  worth 
doing.  They  fail  to  see  from  behind  their 
commentaries  and  from  out  of  their  footnotes, 
the  fact  that  the  one  object  in  studying  litera- 
ture is  joy,  that  the  one  way  of  studying  and 
knowing  literature  is  joy,  and  that  the  one 
way  to  attain  joy  is  to  draw  out  creative  joy. 

Second.  And  if  literature  is  to  be  taught  as 
an  art  it  must  be  taught  as  a  way  of  life.  As 
long  as  literature  and  life  continue  to  be  con- 
ceived and  taught  as  being  separate  things, 
there  can  be  no  wide  and  beautiful  hope  for 
either  of  them.  The  organs  of  literature  are 
precisely  the  same  organs  and  they  are  trained 
on  precisely  the  same  principles  as  the  organs 
of  life. 

Except  an  education  in  books  can  bring  to 
pass  the  right  condition  of  these  organs,  a 
state  of  being  in  the  pupil,  his  knowledge  of 
no  matter  how  long  a  list  of  masterpieces  is 
but  a  catalogue  of  the  names  of  things  for  ever 
left  out  of  his  life.  It  is  little  wonder,  when 
the  drudgery  has  done  its  work  and  the  sorry 


Summary 

show  is  over,  and  the  victim  of  the  System  is 
face  to  face  with  his  empty  soul  at  last,  if  in 
his  earlier  years  at  least  he  seems  overfond  to 
some  of  us  of  receiving  medals,  honours,  and 
valedictories  for  what  he  might  have  been  and 
of  flourishing  a  Degree  for  what  he  has  missed. 

There  was  once  a  Master  of  Arts, 

Who  was  "  nuts"  upon  cranberry  tarts: 

When  he  'd  eaten  his  fill 

He  was  awfully  ill, 
But  he  was  still  a  Master  of  Arts. 

The  power  and  habit  of  studying  and  enjoy- 
ing human  nature  as  it  lives  around  us,  is  not 
only  a  more  human  and  alive  occupation,  but 
it  is  a  more  literary  one  than  becoming  another 
editor  of  ^schylus  or  going  down  to  posterity 
in  footnotes  as  one  of  the  most  prominent  bores 
that  Shakespeare  ever  had.  If  a  teacher  of 
literature  enjoys  being  the  editor  of  ^Sschylus, 
or  if  he  is  happier  in  appearing  on  a  title-page 
with  a  poet  than  he  could  possibly  be  in  being 
a  poet,  it  is  personally  well  enough,  though  it 
may  be  a  disaster  to  the  rest  of  us  and  to 
^Sschylus.  Men  who  can  be  said  as  a  class  to 
care  more  about  literature  than  they  do  about 
life,  who  prefer  the  paper  side  of  things  to  the 
real  one,  are  at  liberty  as  private  persons  to  be 
editors  and  footnote  hunters  to  the  top  of  their 
bent;  but  why  should  they  call  it  "  The  Study 
of  Literature, ' '  to  teach  their  pupils  to  be  foot- 
note hunters  and  editors?  and  how  can  they 


191 


Summary) 


192 


Xost  Hrt  of  TReaDing 


Summary  possibly  teach  anything  else?  and  do  they 
teach  anything  else  ?  And  if  good  teachers  can 
only  teach  what  they  have,  what  shall  we  ex- 
pect of  poor  ones  ? 

In  the  meantime  the  Manufacture  of  the 
Cultured  Mind  is  going  ruthlessly  on,  and 
thousands  of  young  men  and  women  who,  left 
alone  with  the  masters  of  literature,  might  be 
engaged  in  accumulating  and  multiplying  in- 
spiration, are  engaged  in  analysing — dividing 
what  inspiration  they  have;  and,  in  the  one 
natural,  creative  period  of  their  lives,  their 
time  is  entirely  spent  in  learning  how  inspired 
work  was  done,  or  how  it  might  have  been 
done,  or  how  it  should  have  been  done;  in  ab- 
sorbing everything  about  it  except  its  spirit — 
the  power  that  did  it — the  power  that  makes 
being  told  how  to  do  it  uncalled  for,  the  power 
that  asks  and  answers  its  "  Hows  ?  "  for  itself. 
The  serene  powerlessness  of  it  all,  without 
courage  or  passion  or  conviction,  without  self- 
discovery  in  it,  or  self-forgetfulness  or  beauty 
in  it,  or  for  one  moment  the  great  contagion  of 
the  great,  is  one  of  the  saddest  sights  in  this 
modern  day. 

In  the  meantime  the  most  practical  thing  that 
can  be  done  with  the  matter  of  literary  drill  in 
college  is  to  turn  the  eye  of  the  public  on  it. 
Methods  will  change  when  ideals  change,  and 
ideals  will  change  when  the  public  clearly  sees 
ideals,  and  when  the  public  encourages  colleges 
that  see  them.  The  time  is  not  far  off  when  it 


Summary 


will  be  admitted  by  all  concerned  that  the 
true  study  of  masterpieces  consists,  and  always 
must  consist,  in  communing  with  the  things 
that  masterpieces  are  about,  in  the  learning 
and  applying  of  the  principles  of  human  nature, 
in  a  passion  for  real  persons,  and  in  a  daily 
loving  of  the  face  of  the  universe. 

This  idea  may  not  be  considered  very  practi- 
cal. It  stands  for  a  kind  of  education  in  which 
it  is  difficult  to  exhibit  in  rows  actual  results. 
We  are  not  contending  for  an  education  that 
looks  practical.  We  are  contending  merely 
for  education  that  will  be  true  and  beautiful 
and  natural.  It  will  be  practical  the  way  the 
forces  of  nature  are  practical — whether  any  one 
notices  it  or  not. 

The  following  announcement  can  already  be 
seen  on  the  bulletin  boards  of  universities 
around  the  world( — if  looked  for  twice). 

THEY  ARE  COMING  !  O  Shades  of  Learn- 
ing, THE  LOVERS  OF  JOY,  IMPERIOUS  WITH 
JOY,  UNCONQUERABLE  ! 

Their  Sails  are  Flocking  the  East. 

The  High  Seas  are  Theirs. 

They  shall  command  you,  overwhelm  you. 
Book-lubbers,  paper-plodders,  shall  be  as 
though  they  were  not.  The  youth  of  the 
earth  shall  be  renewed  in  the  morning,  the 
suns  and  the  stars  shall  be  unlocked,  and 
the  evening  shall  go  forth  with  joy.  The 
mountains  shall  be  freed  from  the  pick  and 
the  shovel  and  the  book,  and  lift  themselves 


Summary 


194 


3Lost  Hrt  of  1ReaNn0 


H  note  to  heaven.  Flowers  shall  again  outblossom 
botanies,  and  gymnasts  of  music  shall  be  laid 
low,  and  Birds  Through  An  Opera  Glass  shall 
sing.  Joy  shall  come  to  knowledge,  and  the 
strength  of  Joy  upon  it.  THEY  ARE  COMING, 
O  Ye  Shades  of  Learning,  a  thousand  thou- 
sand strong.  Their  sails  flock  the  Sea.  The 
smoke  and  the  throb  of  their  engines  is  the 
promise  of  the  east.  The  days  of  thirteen  - 
thousand-ton,  three-horse-power  education  are 
numbered. 


a  mote 

It  is  one  of  the  danger  signs  of  the  times  that 
the  men  who  have  most  closely  observed  our 
modern  life,  in  its  social,  industrial,  artistic, 
educational,  and  religious  aspects  seem  to  be 
gradually  coming  to  the  point  where  they  all 
but  take  it  for  granted  in  considering  all  social, 
industrial,  and  educational  and  political  ques- 
tions, that  the  conditions  of  modern  times  are 
such,  and  are  going  to  be  such  that  imagina- 
tion and  personality  might  as  well  be  dropped 
as  practical  forces — forces  that  must  be  reck- 
oned with  in  the  movement  of  human  life. 
Nearly  all  the  old-time  outlooks  of  the  Soul, 
as  they  stand  in  history,  have  been  taken  for 
factory  sites,  bought  up  by  syndicates,  moral 
and  otherwise,  and  are  being  used  for  chim- 


H  flote  195 

neys.  Nothing  but  smoke  and  steel  and 
wooden  Things  come  out  of  them.  Poets  and 
brokers  are  both  telling  us  on  every  hand  that 
imagination  is  impossible  and  personality  in- 
credible in  modern  life. 

Imagination  and  personality  are  the  spirit 
and  the  dust  out  of  which  all  great  nations  and 
all  great  religions  are  made. 

The  attempt  has  been  made  in  the  foregoing 
pages  to  point  out  that  they  are  not  dead. 
The  Altar  smoulders. 

In  pointing  out  how  imagination  and  per- 
sonality can  be  wrought  into  one  single  branch 
of  a  man's  education — his  relation  to  books — 
principles  may  have  been  suggested  which  can 
be  concretely  applied  by  all  of  us,  each  in 
our  own  department,  to  the  education  of  the 
whole  man. 


196 


The  Seventh  Interference: 
Libraries.  Wanted :  An 
Old- Fashioned  Librarian 


1  NEVER  shall  quite  forget  the  time  when 
the  rumour  was  started  in  our  town  that 
old  Mr.  M ,  our  librarian — a  gentle,  fur- 
tive, silent  man — a  man  who  (with  the  single 
exception  of  a  long  white  beard)  was  all 
screwed  up  and  bent  around  with  learning, 
who  was  always  slipping  invisibly  in  and  out 
of  his  high  shelves,  and  who  looked  as  if  his 
whole  life  had  been  nothing  but  a  kind  of 
long,  perpetual  salaam  to  books — had  been 
caught  dancing  one  day  with  his  wife. 

' '  Which  only  goes  to  show, ' '  broke  in  The 


197 


M.  P.,  "  what  a  man  of  fixed  literary  habits  — 
mere  book-habits  —  if  he  keeps  on,  is  reduced 
to." 

But  as  I  was  about  to  remark,  for  a  good 
many  weeks  afterward  —  after  the  rumour  was 
started  —  one  kept  seeing  people  (I  was  one  of 
them)  as  they  came  into  the  library,  looking 
shyly  at  Mr.  M  -  ,  as  if  they  were  looking  at 
him  all  over  again.  They  looked  at  him  as 
if  they  had  really  never  quite  noticed  him  be- 
fore. He  sat  at  his  desk,  quiet  and  busy,  and 
bent  over,  with  his  fine-pointed  pen  and  his 
labels,  as  usual,  and  his  big  leather-bound 
catalogue  of  the  universe. 
0  A  few  of  us  had  had  reason  to  suspect  —  at 
least  we  had  had  hopes  —  that  the  pedantry  in 
Mr.  M  -  was  somewhat  superimposed,  that 
he  had  possibilities,  human  and  otherwise,  but 
none  of  us,  it  must  be  confessed,  had  been  able 
to  surmise  quite  accurately  just  where  they 
would  break  out.  We  were  filled  with  a  gentle 
spreading  joy  with  the  very  thought  of  it,  a 
sense  of  having  acquired  a  secret  possession  in 
a  librarian.  The  community  at  large,  how- 
ever, as  it  walked  into  its  library,  looked  at  its 
Acre  of  Books,  and  then  looked  at  its  librarian  ; 
felt  cheated.  It  was  shocked.  The  commun- 
ity had  always  been  proud  of  its  books,  proud 
of  its  Book  Worm.  It  had  always  paid  a  big 
salary  to  it.  And  the  Worm  had  turned. 

I  have  only  been  back  to  the  old  town  twice 
since  the  day  I  left  it,  as  a  boy  —  about  this 


198  %ost  Bet  ot 


vi3.  time.  The  first  time  I  went  he  was  there.  I 
came  across  him  in  his  big,  splendid  new 
library,  his  face  like  some  live,  but  wrinkled 
old  parchment,  twinkling  and  human  though 

—  looking  out  from  its  Dust  Heap.     "  It  seems 
to  me,"  I  thought,  as  I  stood  in  the  doorway, 

—  saw  him  edging  around  an  alcove  in  The 
Syriac  Department,  —  "  that  if  one  must  have  a 
great  dreary  heaped-up  pile  of  books  in  a  town 

—  anyway  —  the  spectacle  of  a  man  like  this, 
flitting  around  in  it,  doting  on  them,  is  what 
one  ought  to  have  to  go  with  it."     He  always 
seemed  to  me  a  kind  of  responsive  every-way- 
at-once    little  man,    book-alive    all   through. 
One  never  missed  it  with  him.     He  had  the 
literary  nerves  of  ten  dead   nations   tingling 
in  him. 

The  next  time  I  was  in  town  they  said  he 
had  resigned.  They  said  he  lived  in  the  little 
grey  house  around  the  corner  from  the  great 
new  glaring  stone  library.  No  one  ever  saw 
him  except  in  one  of  his  long,  hesitating  walks, 
or  sometimes,  perhaps,  by  the  little  study  win- 
dow, pouring  himself  over  into  a  book  there. 
It  was  there  that  I  saw  him  myself  that  last 
morning  —  -older  and  closer  to  the  light  turning 
leaves  —  the  same  still,  swift  eagerness  about 
him. 

I  stepped  into  the  library  next  door  and  saw 
the  new  librarian  —  an  efficient  person.  He 
seemed  to  know  what  time  it  was  while  we 
stood  and  chatted  together.  That  is  the  main 


Cf.  199 

impression  one  had  of  him — that  he  would         cf. 
always  know  what  time  it  was.     Put  him  any- 
where.    One  felt  it. 


II 
Ct 


Our  new  librarian  troubles  me  a  good  deal. 
I  have  not  quite  made  out  why.  Perhaps  it  is 
because  he  has  a  kind  of  chipper  air  with  the 
books.  I  am  always  coming  across  him  in  the 
shelves,  but  I  do  not  seem  to  get  used  to  him. 
Of  course  I  pull  myself  together,  bow  and  say 
things,  make  it  a  point  to  assume  he  is  liter- 
ary, go  through  the  form  of  not  letting  him 
know  what  I  think  as  well  as  may  be,  but  we 
do  not  get  on. 

And  yet  all  the  time  down  underneath  I 
know  perfectly  well  that  there  is  no  real  reason 
why  I  should  find  fault  with  him.  The  only 
thing  that  seems  to  be  the  matter  with  him  is 
that  he  keeps  right  on,  every  time  I  see  him, 
making  me  try  to. 

I  have  had  occasion  to  notice  that,  as  a  gen- 
eral rule,  when  I  find  myself  finding  fault  with 
a  man  in  this  fashion  —  this  vague,  eager 
fashion — the  gist  of  it  is  that  I  merely  want 
him  to  be  some  one  else.  But  in  this  case — 
well,  he  is  some  one  else.  He  is  almost  any- 
body else.  He  might  be  a  head  salesman  in  a 
department  store,  or  a  hotel  clerk,  or  a  train 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


cf.  dispatcher,  or  a  broker,  or  a  treasurer  of  some- 
thing. There  are  thousands  of  things  he  might 
be — ought  to  be — except  our  librarian.*.  He 
has  an  odd,  displaced  look  behind  the  great 
desk.  He  looks  as  if  he  had  gotten  in  by  mis- 
take and  was  trying  to  make  the  most  of  it. 
He  has  a  business-like,  worldly-minded,  foreign 
air  about  him — a  kind  of  off-hand,  pert,  famil- 
iar way  with  books.  He  does  not  know  how 
to  bend  over — like  a  librarian — and  when  one 
comes  on  him  in  an  alcove,  the  way  one  ought 
to  come  on  a  librarian,  with  a  great  folio  on 
his  knees,  he  is — well,  there  are  those  who 
think,  that  have  seen  it,  that  he  is  positively 
comic.  I  followed  him  around  only  the  other 
day  for  fifteen  or  twenty  minutes,  from  one 
alcove  to  another,  and  watched  him  taking 
down  books.  He  does  not  even  know  how  to 
take  down  a  book.  He  takes  all  the  books 
down  alike — the  same  pleasant,  dapper,  capable 
manner,  the  same  peek  and  clap  for  all  of 
them.  He  always  seems  to  have  the  same  in- 
defatigable unconsciousness  about  him,  going 
up  and  down  his  long  aisles,  no  more  idea  of 
what  he  is  about  or  of  what  the  books  are 
about;  everything  about  him  seems  discon- 
nected with  a  library.  I  find  I  cannot  get  my- 
self to  notice  him  as  a  librarian  or  comrade,  or 
book-mind.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  noticed 
himself  in  this  capacity — exactly.  So  far  as  I 
can  get  at  his  mind  at  all,  he  seems  to  have 
decided  that  his  mind  (any  librarian's  mind)  is 


cf. 


a  kind  of  pneumatic-tube,  or  carrier  system  — 
apparently — for  shoving  immortals  at  people. 
Any  higher  or  more  thorough  use  for  a  mind, 
such  as  being  a  kind  of  spirit  of  the  books  for 
people,  making  a  kind  of  spiritual  connection 
with  them  down  underneath,  does  not  seem  to 
have  occurred  to  him. 

JT  Time  was  when  librarians  really  had  some- 
"thing  to  do  with  books.  They  looked  it.  One 
could  almost  tell  a  librarian  on  the  street — tell 
him  at  sight,  if  he  had  been  one  long  enough. 
One  could  feel  a  library  in  a  man  somehow.  It 
struck  in.  Librarians  were  allowed  to  be  per- 
sons. It  was  expected  of  them.  They  have 
not  always  been  what  so  many  of  them  are 
now — mere  couplings,  conveniences,  connect- 
ing-rods, literary-beltings.  They  were  identi- 
fied— wrought  in  with  books.  They  could  not 
be  unmixed.  They  ate  books;  and,  like  the 
little  green  caterpillars  that  eat  green  grass, 
the  colour  showed  through.  A  sort  of  general 
brown,  faded  colour,  a  little  undusted  around 
the  edges,  was  the  proper  colour  for  librarians. 
It  is  true  that  people  did  not  expect  librarians 
to  look  quite  human — at  least  on  the  outside, 
sometimes,  and  doubtless  the  whole  matter  was 
carried  too  far.  But  it  does  seem  to  me  it  is 
some  comfort  (if  one  has  to  have  a  librarian 
in  a  library)  to  have  one  that  goes  with  the 
books  —  same  colour,  tone,  feeling,  spirit,  and 
everything — the  kind  of  librarian  that  slips  in 
and  out  among  books  without  being  noticed 


SLost  Brt  ot 


etal. 


there,  one  way  or  the  other,  like  the  overtone 
in  a  symphony. 

Ill 

etal 

X 

But  the  trouble  with  our  library  is  not  merely 
the  new  librarian,  who  permeates,  penetrates, 
and  ramifies  the  whole  library  within  and 
without,  percolating  efficiency  into  its  farthest 
and  loneliest  alcoves.  Our  new  librarian  has 
a  corps  of  assistants.  And  even  if  you  man- 
age, by  slipping  around  a  little,  to  get  over  to 
where  a  book  is,  alone,  and  get  settled  down 
with  it,  there  is  always  some  one  who  is,  has 
been,  or  will  be  looking  over  your  shoulder. 

I  dare  say  it 's  a  defect  of  temperament — this 
having  one's  shoulder  looked  over  in  libraries. 
Other  people  do  not  seem  to  be  troubled  much, 
and  I  suppose  I  ought  to  admit,  while  I  am 
about  it,  that  having  one's  shoulder  looked 
over  in  a  library  does  not  in  the  least  depend 
upon  any  one's  actually  looking  over  it.  That 
is  merely  a  matter  of  form.  It  is  a  little  hard 
to  express  it.  What  one  feels — at  least  in  our 
library — is  that  one  is  in  a  kind  of  side-looking 
place.  One  feels  a  kind  of  literary  detective 
system  going  silently  on  in  and  out  all  around 
one,  a  polite,  absent-minded-looking  watchful- 
ness. 
*  Now  I  am  not  for  one  moment  flattering 


et  al.  203 

myself  that  I  can  make  my  fault-finding  with        et  >*• 
our  librarian's  assistants  amount  to  much — fill 
out  a  blank  with  it. 

No  one  can  feel  more  strongly  than  I  do  my 
failure  to  put  my  finger  on  the  letter  of  our 
librarian's  faults.  I  cannot  even  tell  the  dif- 
ference between  the  faults  and  the  virtues  of 
our  librarian's  assistants.  Either  by  doing  the 
right  thing  with  the  wrong  spirit,  or  the  wrong 
thing  with  the  right  spirit  they  do  their  faults 
and  virtues  all  up  together.  Their  indefatig- 
able unobtrusiveness,  their  kindly,  faithful 
service  I  both  dread  and  appreciate.  I  have 
tried  my  utmost  to  notice  and  emphasise  every 
day  the  pleasant  things  about  them,-  but  I 
always  get  tangled  up.  I  have  started  out  to 
think  with  approval,  for  instance,  of  the  hush, 
— the  hush  that  clothes  them  as  a  garment, — 
but  it  has  all  ended  in  my  merely  wondering 
where  they  got  it  and  what  they  thought  they 
were  doing  with  it.  One  would  think  that  a 
hush — a  hush  of  almost  any  kind — could  hardly 
help — but  I  have  said  enough.  I  do  not  want 
to  seem  censorious,  but  if  ever  there  was  a 
visible,  unctuous,  tangible,  actual  thick  silence, 
a  silence  that  can  be  proved,  if  ever  there  was  a 
silence  that  stood  up  and  flourished  and  swung 
its  hat,  that  silence  is  in  our  library.  The  way 
our  librarian's  assistants  go  tiptoeing  and  re- 
verberating around  the  room — well — it's  one 
of  those  things  that  follow  a  man  always,  fol- 
low his  inmost  being  all  his  life.  It  gets  in 


204  %ost  Hct  of 


ct  ai.  with  the  books  —  after  a  few  years  or  so.  One 
can  feel  the  tiptoeing  going  on  in  a  book  —  one 
of  our  library  books  —  when  one  gets  home  with 
it.  It  is  the  spirit  of  the  place.  Everything 
that  comes  out  of  it  is  followed  and  tiptoed 
around  by  our  librarian's  assistants'  silence. 
They  are  followed  about  by  it  themselves.  The 
thick  little  blonde  one,  with  the  high  yellow 
hair,  lives  in  our  ward.  One  feels  a  kind  of 
hush  rimming  her  around,  when  one  meets  her 
on  the  street. 

Now  I  do  not  wish  to  claim  that  librarians' 
assistants  can  possibly  be  blamed,  in  so  many 
words,  either  for  this,  or  for  any  of  the  other 
things  that  seem  to  make  them  (in  our  library, 
at  least)  more  prominent  than  the  books. 
Everything  in  a  library  seems  to  depend  upon 
something  in  it  that  cannot  be  put  into  words. 
It  seems  to  be  a  kind  of  spirit.  If  the  spirit  is 
the  wrong  spirit,  not  all  the  librarians  in  the 
world,  not  even  the  books  themselves  can  do 
anything  about  it. 

Postscript.  I  do  hope  that  no  one  will  sup- 
pose from  this  chapter  that  I  am  finding  fault 
or  think  I  am  finding  fault  with  our  assistant 
librarians.  I  am  merely  finding  fault  with  them 
(may  Heaven  forgive  them  !)  because  I  cannot. 
It  doesn't  seem  to  make  very  much  difference 
—  their  doing  certain  things  or  not  doing  them. 
They  either  do  them  or  they  don't  do  them  — 
whichever  it  is  —  with  the  same  spirit.  They 


etc.  205 

are  not  really  down  in  their  hearts  true  to  the  etc- 
books.  One  can  hardly  help  feeling  vaguely, 
persistently  resentful  over  having  them  about 
presiding  over  the  past.  One  never  catches 
them  —  at  least  I  never  do  —  forgetting  them- 
selves. One  never  comes  on  one  loving  a  book. 
They  seem  to  be  servants, —  most  of  them,  — 
book  chambermaids.  They  do  not  care  any- 
thing about  a  library  as  a  library.  They  just 
seem  to  be  going  around  remembering  rules 
in  it. 

IV 

etc 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  as  good  as  said  the  other 
day,  when  I  had  been  trying  as  well  as  I  could 
to  express  something  of  this  kind,  that  the  real 
trouble  with  the  modern  library  was  not  with 
the  modern  library,  but  with  me.  He  thought 
I  tried  to  carry  too  many  likes  and  dislikes 
around  with  me,  that  I  was  too  sensitive.  He 
seemed  to  think  that  I  should  learn  to  be  cal- 
lous in  places  of  public  resort. 

I  said  I  had  no  very  violent  dislikes  to  deal 
with.  The  only  thing  I  could  think  of  that 
was  the  matter  with  me  in  a  library  was  that  I 
had  ?  passion  for  books.  I  did  n't  like  climb- 
ing over  a  barricade  of  catalogues  to  get  to 
books.  I  hated  to  feel  partitioned  off  from 
them,  to  stand  and  watch  rows  of  people  mark- 
ing things  between  me  and  books.  I  thought 


2O6 


Xost  Hct  of  IReaoing 


etc. 


that  things  had  come  to  a  pretty  pass,  if  a  man 
could  not  so  much  as  touch  elbows  with  a  poet 
nowadays — with  Plato,  for  instance — without 
carrying  a  redoubt  of  terrible  beautiful  young 
ladies.  I  said  I  thought  a  great  many  other 
people  felt  the  way  I  did.  I.  admitted  there 
were  other  sides  to  it,  but  there  were  times,  I 
said,  when  it  almost  seemed  to  me  that  this 
spontaneous  uprising  in  our  country  —  this 
movement  of  the  Book  Lovers,  for  instance  — 
was  simply  a  struggle  on  the  part  of  the  people 
to  get  away  from  Mr.  Carnegie's  libraries. 
They  are  hemming  literature  and  human 
nature  in,  on  every  side,  or  they  are  going  to 
unless  Mr.  Carnegie  can  buy  up  occasional 
old-fashioned  librarians — some  other  kind  than 
are  turned  out  in  steel  works  —  to  put  into 
them.  Libraries  are  getting  to  be  huge  Sepa- 
rators. Books  that  have  been  put  through 
libraries  are  separated  from  themselves.  They 
are  depersonalised — the  human  nature  all  taken 
off.  And  yet  when  one  thinks  of  it,  with  nine 
people  out  of  ten  —  the  best  people  and  the 
worst  both — the  sense  of  having  a  personal  .re- 
lation to  a  book,  the  sense  of  snuggling  up 
with  one's  own  little  life  to  a  book,  is  what 
books  are  for. 

v/"  To  a  man,"  I  said,  "to  whom  books  are 
people,  and  the  livest  kind  of  people,  brothers 
of  his  own  flesh,  cronies  of  his  life,  the  whole 
business  of  getting  a  book  in  a  library  is  full 
of  resentment  and  rebellion.  He  finds  his 


etc.  207 

rights,  or  what  he  thinks  are  his  rights,  being  «tc» 
treated  as  privileges,  his  most  sacred  and  con- 
fidential relations,  his  relations  with  the  great, 
meddled  with  by  strangers — pleasant  enough 
strangers,  but  still  strangers.  Perhaps  he 
wishes  to  see  John  Milton.  He  goes  down  town 
to  a  great  unhomelike-looking  building,  and 
slides  in  at  the  door.  He  steps  up  to  a  wall, 
and  asks  permission  to  see  John  Milton.  He 
waits  in  a  kind  of  vague,  unsatisfied  fashion, 
but  he  feels  that  machinery  is  being  set  in 
motion.  While  it  is  being  set  in  motion,  he 
sits  down  before  the  wall  on  one  of  the  seats  or 
pews  where  a  large  audience  of  other  comfort- 
less and  lonely-looking  people  are.  He  feels 
the  great,  heartless  building  gathering  itself 
together,  going  after  John  Milton  for  him, 
while  he  sits  and  waits.  One  after  the  other 
he  hears  human  beings'  names  being  called  out 
in  space,  and  one  by  one  poor  scared-looking 
people  who  seem  to  be  ashamed  to  go  with 
their  names  —  most  of  them  —  step  up  before 
the  audience.  He  sees  a  book  being  swung 
out  to  them*,  watches  them  slink  gratefully 
away,  and  finally  his  own  name  echoing  about 
among  the  Immortals,  startles  its  way  down 
to  him.  Then  he  steps  up  to  the  wall  again, 
and  John  Milton  at  last,  as  on  some  huge 
transcendental  derrick  belonging  to  the  city  of 

,  is  swung  into  his  arms.     He  feels  of  the 

outside  gropingly  —  takes  it  home.     If  he  can 
get  John  Milton  to  come  to  life  again  after  all 


208  Xost  Hrt  of  1Rea£>ina 

etc.         this,  he  communes  with  him.     In  two  weeks 
he  takes  him  back.     Then  the  derrick  again. 

The  only  kind  of  book  that  I  ever  feel  close 
to,  in  the  average  library,  is  a  book  on  war. 
Even  if  I  go  in,  in  a  gentle,  harmless,  happy, 
singing  sort  of  way,  thinking  I  want  a  volume 
of  pastoral  poems,  by  the  time  I  get  it,  I  wish 
it  were  something  that  could  be  loaded,  or  that 
would  go  off.  As  for  asking  for  a  book  and 
reading  it  in  cold  blood  right  in  the  middle  of 
such  a  place,  it  will  always  be  beyond  me.  I 
have  never  found  a  book  I  could  do  it  with 
yet.  However  I  struggle  to  follow  the  train 
of  thought  in  it,  it  's  a  fuse.  I  find  myself 
breaking  out,  when  I  see  all  these  far-away- 
looking  people  coming  up  in  rows  to  their  far- 
away books.  "A  library,"  I  say  to  myself, 
"  is  a  huge  barbaric,  mediaeval  institution, 
where  behind  stone  and  glass  a  man's  dearest 
friends  in  the  world,  the  familiars  of  his  life, 
lie  helpless  in  their  cells.  It  is  the  Peniten- 
tiary of  Immortals.  There  are  certain  visiting 
days  when  friends  and  relatives  are  allowed  to 
come,  but  it  only — "  At  this  point  a  gong 
sounds  and  tells  me  to  go  home.  "Are  not 
books  bone  of  a  man's  bone,  and  flesh  of  his 
flesh  ?  Ought  n't  they  to  be  ?  Shall  a  man 
ask  permission  to  see  his  wife  ?  Why  should 
I  fill  out  a  slip  to  a  pretty  girl,  when  I  want  to 
be  in  Greece  with  Homer,  or  go  to  hell  with 
Dante?  Why  should  I  write  on  a  piece  of 
paper,  '  I  promise  to  return — infinity — by  six 


etc*  209 

o'clock '  ?  A  library  is  a  huge  machine  for  etc. 
keeping  the  letter  with  books  and  violating 
their  spirit.  The  fact  that  the  machinery  is 
rilled  with  a  mirage  of  pleasant  faces  does  not 
help.  Pleasant  faces  make  machinery  worse 
— if  they  are  a  part  of  it.  They  make  one 
expect  something  better." 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  wished  me  to  understand 
at  this  point  that  I  was  not  made  right,  that  I 
was  incapable,  helpless  in  a  library,  that  I  did 
not  seem  to  know  what  to  do  unless  I  could 
have  a  simple,  natural,  or  country  relation  to 
books. 

"  It  doesn't  follow,"  he  said,  "  because  you 
are  bashful  in  a  library,  cannot  get  your  mind 
to  work  there,  with  other  people  around,  that 
the  other  people  ought  n't  to  be  around. 
There  are  a  great  many  ways  of  using  a 
library,  and  the  more  people  there  are  crowded 
in  with  the  books  there,  other  things  being 
equal,  the  better.  It '  s  what  a  library  is  for, ' '  he 
said,  and  a  great  deal  more  to  the  same  effect. 

I  listened  a  while  and  told  him  that  I  sup- 
posed he  was  right.  I  supposed  I  had  natur- 
ally a  kind  of  wild  mind.  I  allowed  that  the 
more  a  library  in  a  general  way  took  after  a 
piece  of  woods,  the  more  I  enjoyed  it.  I  did 
not  attempt  to  deny  that  a  library  was  made 
for  the  people,  but  I  did  think  there  ought  to 
be  places  in  libraries — all  libraries — where  wild 
ones,  like  me,  could  go.  There  ought  to  be  in 
every  library  some  uncultivated,  uncatalogued, 


210  Xost  Hrt  of  IReaofna 

etc.  unlibrarianed  tract  where  a  man  with  a  skittish 
or  country  mind  will  have  a  chance,  where  a 
man  who  likes  to  be  alone  with  books — with 
books  just  as  books  —  will  be  permitted  to 
browze,  unnoticed,  bars  all  down,  and  frisk 
with  his  mind  and  roll  himself,  without  turning 
over  all  of  a  sudden  only  to  find  a  librarian's 
assistant  standing  there  wondering  at  him, 
looking  down  to  the  bottom  of  his  soul. 

I  am  not  in  the  least  denying  that  librarians 
are  well  enough, — that  is,  might  be  well 
enough, —  but  as  things  are  going  to-day,  they 
all  seem  to  contribute,  somehow,  toward  mak- 
ing a  library  a  conscious  and  stilted  place. 
They  hold  one  up  to  the  surface  of  things,  with 
books.  They  make  impossible  to  a  man  those 
freedoms  of  the  spirit — those  best  times  of  all 
in  a  library,  when  one  feels  free  to  find  one's 
mood,  when  one  gets  hold  of  one's  divining- 
rod,  opens  down  into  a  book,  discovers  a  new, 
unconscious,  subterranean  self  there. 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  broke  in  at  this  point  and 
said  this  was  all  subjective  folderol  on  my  part 
— that  I  had  better  drop  it — a  kind  of  habit  I 
had  gotten  into  lately,  of  splitting  the  hairs  of 
my  emotions — or  something  to  that  effect.  He 
went  on  at  some  length  and  took  the  general 
ground  before  he  was  through,  that  absolutely 
everything  in  modern  libraries  depended  on 
the  librarians.  Librarians  —  I  should  judge — 
in  a  modern  library  were  what  books  were  for. 
He  said  that  the  more  intelligent  people  were 


etc.  211 

nowadays  the  more  they  enjoyed  librarians —         etc. 
knew  how  to  use  them  —  doted  on  them,  etc., 
ad  infinitum. 

"  The  kind  of  people  one  sees  at  operas,"  I 
interrupted,  "  listening  with  librettos,  the  kind 
of  people  who  puff  up  mountains  to  see  views 
and  extract  geography  from  them,  the  people 
one  meets  in  the  fields,  nowadays,  flower  in 
one  hand,  botany  in  the  other,  the  kind  of 
people  who  have  to  have  charts  to  enjoy  stars 
with — these  are  the  people  who  want  librarians 
between  them  and  their  books.  The  more  li- 
brarians they  can  get  standing  in  a  row  between 
them  and  a  masterpiece  the  more  they  feel 
they  are  appreciating  it,  the  more  card  cata- 
logues, gazetteers,  dictionaries,  derricks,  and 
other  machinery  they  can  have  pulling  and 
hauling  above  their  heads  in  a  library  the  more 
literary  they  feel  in  it.  They  feel  culture  — 
somehow  —  stirring  around  them.  They  are 
not  exactly  sure  what  culture  is,  but  they  feel 
that  a  great  deal  of  it — whatever  it  is — is  being 
poured  over  into  them. 

But  I  must  begin  to  bring  these  wanderings 
about  libraries  to  a  close.  It  can  do  no  harm  to 
remark,  perhaps,  that  I  am  not  maintaining  — 
do  not  wish  to  maintain  (I  could  not  if  I  dared) 
that  the  modern  librarian  with  all  his  faults 
is  not  useful  at  times.  As  a  sort  of  pianola 
or  aeolian  attachment  for  a  library,  as  a  me- 
chanical contrivance  for  making  a  compara- 
tively ignorant  man  draw  perfectly  enormous 


OLost  Brt  of 


harmonies  out  of  it  (which  he  does  not  care 
anything  about),  a  modern  librarian  helps. 
All  that  I  am  maintaining  is,  that  I  am  not 
this  comparatively  ignorant  man.  I  am  another 
one.  I  am  merely  saying  that  the  pianola  way 
of  dealing  with  ignorance,  in  my  own  case,  up 
to  the  present  at  least,  does  not  grow  on  me. 


V 
0 


I  suppose  that  the  Boston  Public  Library 
would  say — if  it  said  anything — that  I  had  a 
mere  Old  Athenaeum  kind  of  a  mind.  I  am 
obliged  to  confess  that  I  dote  on  the  Old 
Athenaeum.  It  protects  one's  optimism.  One 
is  made  to  feel  there — let  right  down  in  the 
midst  of  civilisation,  within  a  stone's  throw  of 
the  State  House — that  it  is  barely  possible  to 
keep  civilisation  off.  One  feels  it  rolling  itself 
along,  heaping  itself  up  out  on  Tremont  Street 
and  the  Common  (the  very  trees  cannot  live  in 
it),  but  one  is  out  of  reach.  When  one  has  to 
live  in  civilisation,  as  most  of  us  do,  nearly  all 
of  one's  time  every  day  in  the  week,  it  means 
a  great  deal.  I  can  hardly  say  how  much  it 
means  to  me,  in  the  daily  struggle  with  it,  to 
be  able  to  dodge  behind  the  Athenaeum,  to  be 
able  to  go  in  and  sit  down  there,  if  only  for  a 
minute,  to  be  behind  glass,  as  it  were,  to  hear 
great,  hungry  Tremont  Street  chewing  men 


213 


up,  hundreds  of  trainloads  at  a  time,  into  wood- 
pulp,  smoothing  them  out  into  nobody  or 
everybody;  it  makes  one 'feel,  while  it  is  not 
as  it  ought  to  be,  as  if,  after  all,  there  might 
be  some  way  out,  as  if  some  provision  had  been 
made  in  this  world,  or  might  be  made,  for  let- 
ting human  beings  live  on  it. 

The  general  sense  of  unsensitiveness  in  a 
modern  library,  of  hurry  and  rush  and  effi- 
ciency, above  all,  the  kind  of  moral  smugness 
one  feels  there,  the  book-self-consciousness, 
the  unprotected,  public-street  feeling  one  has — 
all  these  things  are  very  grave  and  important 
obstacles  which  our  great  librarians,  with  their 
great  systems  —  most  of  them  —  have  yet  to 
reckon  with.  A  little  more  mustiness,  gentle- 
men, please,  silence,  slowness,  solitude  with 
books,  as  if  they  were  woods,  unattainableness 
(and  oh,  will  any  one  understand  it  ?),  a  little 
inconvenience,  a  little  old-fashioned,  happy 
inconvenience;  a  chance  to  gloat  and  take 
pains  and  love  things  with  difficulties,  a  chance 
to  go  around  the  corners  of  one's  knowledge, 
to  make  modest  discoveries  all  by  one's  self. 
It  is  no  small  thing  to  go  about  a  library  hav- 
ing books  happen  to  one,  to  feel  one's  self 
sitting  down  with  a  book — one's  own  private 
Providence — turning  the  pages  of  events. 

One  cannot  help  feeling  that  if  a  part  of  the 
money  that  is  being  spent  carnegieing  nowa- 
days, that  is,  in  arranging  for  a  great  many 
books  and  a  great  many  people  to  pile  up  order 


214  %ost  Hct  of  IReaoing 

among  a  great  many  books,  could  be  spent  in 
providing  hundreds  of  thousands  of  small  libra- 
ries, or  small  places  in  large  ones,  where  men 
who  would  like  to  do  it  would  feel  safe  to  creep 
in  sometimes  and  open  their  souls — nobody 
looking — it  would  be  no  more  than  fair. 

Postscript.  One  has  to  be  so  much  of  one's 
time  helpless  before  a  librarian  in  this  world, 
one  has  to  put  him  on  his  honour  as  a  gentle- 
man so  much,  to  expose  such  vast,  incredible 
tracts  of  ignorance  to  him,  that  I  know  only  too 
well  that  I,  of  all  men,  cannot  afford,  in  these 
pages  or  anywhere  else,  to  say  anything  that 
will  permanently  offend  librarians.  I  do  hope  I 
have  not.  It  is  only  through  knowing  so  many 
good  ones  that  I  know  enough  to  criticise  the 
rest.  If  I  am  right,  it  is  because  I  am  their 
spokesman.  If  I  am  wrong,  I  am  not  a  well- 
informed  person,  and  I  do  not  count  anywhere 
in  particular  on  anything.  The  best  way,  I 
suspect,  for  a  librarian  to  deal  with  me  is  not 
to  try  to  classify  me.  I  ought  to  be  put  out 
of  the  way  on  this  subject,  tucked  back  into 
any  general  pigeon-hole  of  odds  and  ends  of 
temperament.  If  I  had  not  felt  that  I  could 
be  cheerfully  sorted  out  at  the  end  of  this 
page,  filed  away  by  everybody, — almost  any- 
body,—  as  not  making  very  much  difference,  I 
would  not  have  spoken  so  freely.  There  is  not 
a  librarian  who  has  read  as  far  as  this,  in  this 
book,  who,  though  he  may  have  had  moments 


215 


of  being  troubled  in  it,  will  not  be  able  to  dis- 
pose of  me  with  a  kind  of  grateful,  relieved 
certainty.  However  that  may  be,  I  can  only 
beg  you,  Oh,  librarians,  and  all  ye  kindly 
learned  ones,  to  be  generous  with  me,  wherever 
you  put  me.  I  leave  my  poor,  naked,  shiver- 
ing, miscellaneous  soul  in  your  hands. 


217 


Book  II 
possibilities 


219 


{DREAMED  I  lived  in  a  day  when  men 
dared  have  visions.  I  lay  in  a  great  white 
Silence  as  one  who  waited  for  something. 

And  as  I  lay  and  waited,  the  Silence  groped 
toward  me  and  I  felt  it  gathering  nearer  and 
nearer  about  me. 

Then  it  folded  me  to  Itself. 

I  made  Time  my  bedside. 

And  it  seemed  to  me,  when  I  had  rested  my 
soul  with  years,  and  when  I  had  found  Space 
and  had  stretched  myself  upon  it,  I  awoke. 

I  lay  in  a  great  white  empty  place,  and  the 
whole  world  like  solemn  music  came  to  me. 

And  I  looked,  and  behold  in  the  shadow  of 
the  earth,  which  came  and  went,  I  saw  Human 
Lives  being  tossed  about.  On  the  solemn 
rhythmic  music,  back  and  forth,  I  saw  them 
lifted  across  Silence. 

And  I  said  to  my  Spirit,  "  What  is  it  they 
are  doing  ? ' ' 


Ube  Ie0ue 


220 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


Ubei»0ue         "  They  are  living,"  the  Spirit  said. 

So  they  floated  before  me  while  The  Great 
Shadow  came  and  went. 


O  my  Soul,  hast  thou  forgotten  thy  days 
in  the  world,  when  thou  didst  watch  the  pro- 
cessional of  it,  when  the  faces  —  day-lighted, 
night-lighted,  faces — trooped  before  thee,  and 
thou  didst  look  upon  them  and  delight  in 
them  ?  What  didst  thou  see  in  the  world  ?  " 

' '  I  saw  Two  Immeasurable  Hands  in  it, ' ' 
said  my  Soul,  "  over  every  man.  I  saw  that 
the  man  did  not  see  the  Hands.  I  saw  that 
they  reached  out  of  infinity  for  him  down 
through  the  days  and  the  nights.  And 
whether  he  slept  or  prayed  or  wrought,  I  saw 
that  they  still  reached  out  for  him,  and  folded 
themselves  about  him." 

And  I  asked  God  what  The  Hands  were. 

1 '  The  man  calls  them  Heredity  and  Environ- 
ment," God  said. 

And  God  laughed. 

Words  came  from  far  for  me  and  waited  in 
tumult  within  me.  But  my  mouth  was  filled 
with  silence. 


I  know  that  I  do  not  know  the  world,  but 
out  of  my  little  corner  of  time  and  space  I  have 
watched  in  it, — watched  men  and  truths  strug- 
gling in  it,  and  in  the  struggle  it  has  seemed 
to  me  I  have  seen  three  kinds  of  men.  I  have 


Ube  Tissue 


seen  the  man  who  feels  that  he  is  being  made, 
and  the  man  who  feels  that  he  is  making  him- 
self. But  I  have  seen  also  another  kind  of 
man — the  man  who  feels  that  the  Universe  is 
at  work  on  him,  but  (within  limits)  under  his 
own  supervision. 

I  have  made  a  compact  in  my  soul  with  this 
man,  for  a  new  world.  He  is  not  willing  to 
be  a  mere  manufactured  man — one  more  being 
turned  out  from  The  Factory  of  Circumstance — 
neither  does  he  think  very  much  of  the  man 
who  makes  himself — who  could  make  himself. 
If  he  were  to  try  such  a  thing — try  to  make  a 
man  himself,  he  would  really  rather  try  it,  if 
the  truth  must  be  told,  on  some  one  else. 

As  near  as  he  can  define  it,  life  seems  to  be 
(to  the  normal  or  inspired  man)  a  kind  of  alter- 
nate grasping  and  being  grasped.  Sometimes 
he  feels  his  destiny  tossed  between  the  Two 
Immeasurable  Hands.  Sometimes  he  feels 
that  they  have  paused — that  the  Immeasurable 
Hands  have  been  lent  to  him,  that  the  toss  of 
destiny  is  made  his  own. 

He  watches  these  two  great  forces  playing 
under  heaven,  before  his  eyes,  with  his  im- 
mortal life,  every  daj'.  His  soul  takes  these 
powers  of  heaven,  as  the  mariner  takes  the 
winds  of  the  sea.  He  tacks  to  destiny.  He 
takes  the  same  attitude  toward  the  laws  of 
heredity  and  environment  that  the  Creator 
took  when  He  made  them.  He  takes  it  for 
granted  that  a  God  who  made  these  laws  as 


"Cbc  Tissue 


222 


Xost  Hct  ot 


Selection 


conveniences  for  Himself,  in  running  a.  Uni- 
verse, must  have  intended  them  for  men  as 
conveniences  in  living  in  it.  In  proportion  as 
men  have  been  like  God  they  have  treated 
these  laws  as  He  does  —  as  conveniences. 
Thousands  of  men  are  doing  it  to-day.  Men 
did  it  for  thousands  of  years  before  they  knew 
what  the  laws  were,  when  they  merely  fol- 
lowed their  instincts  with  them.  In  a  man's 
answer  to  the  question,  How  can  I  make  a 
convenience  of  the  law  of  heredity  and  environ- 
ment ?—  education  before  being  born  and  edu- 
cation after  being  born  —  will  be  found  to  lie 
always  the  secret  glory  or  the  secret  shame  of 
his  life. 

II 


jfirst  Selection 


If  the  souls  of  the  unborn  could  go  about 
reconnoitering  the  earth  a  little  before  they 
settled  on  it,  selecting  the  parents  they  would 
have,  the  places  where  it  pleased  them  to  be 
born,  nine  out  of  ten  of  them  (judging  from 
the  way  they  conduct  themselves  in  the  flesh) 
would  spend  nearly  all  their  time  in  looking 
for  the  best  house  and  street  to  be  born  in, 
the  best  things  to  be  born  to.  Such  a  little 
matter  as  selecting  the  right  parents  would  be 
left,  probably,  to  the  last  moment,  or  they 
would  expect  it  to  be  thrown  in. 

We  are  all  of  us  more  or  less  aware,  es- 


Conveniences 


223 


pecially  as  we  advance  in  life,  that  overlook- 
ing the  importance  of  parents  is  a  mistake. 
There  have  been  times  in  the  lives  of  some  of 
us  when  having  parents  at  all  seemed  a  mis- 
take. We  can  remember  hours  when  we  were 
sure  we  had  the  wrong  ones.  After  our  first  dis- 
appointment,— that  is,  when  we  have  learned 
how  unmanageable  parents  are, — we  have  our 
time — most  of  us — of  making  comparisons,  of 
trying  other  people's  parents  on.  This  cannot 
be  said  to  work  very  well,  taken  as  a  whole, 
and  it  is  generally  admitted  that  people  who 
are  most  serious  about  it,  who  take  unto  them- 
selves fathers-  and  mothers-in-law  seldom  do 
any  better  than  at  first.  The  conclusion  of  the 
whole  matter  would  seem  to  be:  Since  a  man 
cannot  select  his  parents  and  his  parents  can- 
not select  him,  he  must  select  himself. 
That  is  what  books  are  for. 

Ill 

Conveniences 

It  is  the  first  importance  of  a  true  book  that 
a  man  can  select  his  neighbours  with  it, — can 
overcome  space,  riches,  poverty,  and  time  with 
it, — and  the  grave,  and  break  bread  with  the 
dead.  A  book  is  a  portable  miracle.  It 
makes  a  man's  native  place  all  over  for  him, 
for  a  dollar  and  a  quarter;  and  many  a  man  in 
this  somewhat  hard  and  despairing  world  has 


Con* 

vcmenccs 


224 


SLost  Hrt  ot 


Con* 
veniences 


been  furnished  with  a  new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth  for  twenty-five  cents.  Out  of  a  public 
library  he  has  felt  reached  down  to  him  the 
grasp  of  heroes.  Hurrying  home  in  the  night, 
perhaps,  with  his  tiny  life  hid  under  stars, 
but  with  a  Book  under  his  arm,  he  has  felt  a 
Greeting  against  his  breast  and  held  it  tight. 
"  Who  art  thou,  my  lad  ?  "  it  said;  "  who  art 
thou?"  And  the  saying  was  not  forgotten. 
If  it  is  true  that  the  spirits  of  the  mighty  dead 
are  abroad  in  the  night  they  are  turning  the 
leaves  of  books. 

There  are  other  inspiring  things  in  the 
world,  but  there  is  nothing  else  that  carries 
itself  among  the  sons  of  men  like  the  book. 
With  such  divine  plenteousness — seeds  of  the 
worlds  in  it — it  goes  about  flocking  on  the 
souls  of  men.  There  is  something  so  broad- 
cast, so  universal  about  the  way  of  a  book  with 
a  man:  boundless,  subtle,  ceaseless,  irresistible, 
following  him  and  loving  him,  renewing  him, 
delighting  in  him  and  hoping  for  him — like  a 
god.  It  is  as  the  way  of  Nature  herself  with 
a  man.  One  cannot  always  feel  it,  but  some- 
how, when  I  am  really  living  a  real  day,  I  feel 
as  if  some  Great  Book  were  around  me — were 
always  around  me.  I  feel  myself  all-enfolded, 
penetrated,  surrounded  with  it  —  the  vast, 
gentle  force  of  it — sky  and  earth  of  it.  It  is  as 
if  I  saw  it,  sometimes,  building  new  boundaries 
for  me,  out  there — softly,  gently,  on  the  edges 
of  the  night — for  me  and  for  all  human  life. 


Conveniences 


225 


Other  inspiring  things  seem  to  be  less  stead- 
fast for  us.  They  cannot  always  free  them- 
selves and  then  come  and  free  us.  Music 
cannot  be  depended  upon.  It  sings  sometimes 
for  and  sometimes  against  us.  Sometimes, 
also,  music  is  still — absolutely  still,  all  the  way 
down  from  the  stars  to  the  grass.  At  best  it  is 
for  some  people  and  for  others  not,  and  is  ad- 
dicted to  places.  It  is  a  part  of  the  air— part 
of  the  climate  in  Germany,  but  there  is  but 
one  country  in  the  world  made  for  listening  in 
— where  any  one,  every  one  listens,  the  way 
one  breathes.  The  great  pictures  inspire,  on 
the  whole,  but  few  people — most  of  them  with 
tickets.  Cathedrals  cannot  be  unmoored,  have 
never  been  seen  by  the  majority  of  men  at 
all,  except  in  dreams  and  photographs.  Most 
mountains  (for  all  practical  purposes)  are 
private  property.  The  sea  (a  look  at  the 
middle  of  it)  is  controlled  by  two  or  three 
syndicates.  The  sky — the  last  stronghold  of 
freedom  —  is  rented  out  for  the  most  part, 
where  most  men  live — in  cities;  and  in  New 
York  and  London  the  people  who  can  afford 
it  pay  taxes  for  air,  and  grass  is  a  dollar  a 
blade.  Being  born  is  the  only  really  free  thing 
— and  dying.  Next  to  these  in  any  just  esti- 
mate of  the  comparatively  free  raw  material 
that  goes  to  the  making  of  a  human  life  comes 
the  printed  book. 

A  library,  on  the  whole,  is  the  purest  and 
most  perfect  form  of  power  that  exists,  because 


Con- 
veniences 


226 


Olost  Hrt  ot  TRea&fng 


Con* 

vcnicnccs 


it  is  a  lever  on  the  nature  of  things.  If  a  man 
is  born  with  the  wrong  neighbours  it  brings 
the  right  ones  flocking  to  him.  It  is  the  uni- 
verse to  order.  It  makes  the  world  like  a 
globe  in  a  child's  hands.  He  turns  up  the 
part  where  he  chooses  to  live — now  one  way 
and  now  another,  that  he  may  delight  in  it  and 
live  in  it.  If  he  is  a  poet  it  is  the  meaning  of 
life  to  him  that  he  can  keep  on  turning  it  until 
he  has  delighted  and  tasted  and  lived  in  all  of  it. 
The  second  importance  of  true  books  is  that 
they  are  not  satisfied  with  the  first.  They  are 
not  satisfied  to  be  used  to  influence  a  man  from 
the  outside — as  a  kind  of  house-furnishing  for 
his  soul.  A  true  book  is  never  a  mere  con- 
trivance for  arranging  the  right  bit  of  sky  for 
a  man  to  live  his  life  under,  or  the  right  neigh- 
bours for  him  to  live  his  life  with.  It  goes 
deeper  than  this.  A  mere  playing  upon  a 
man's  environment  does  not  seem  to  satisfy  a 
true  book.  It  plays  upon  the  latent  infinity 
in  the  man  himself.  The  majority  of  men  are 
not  merely  conceived  in  sin  and  born  in  lies, 
but  they  are  the  lies;  and  lies  as  well  as  truths 
flow  in  their  veins.  Lies  hold  their  souls  back 
thousands  of  years.  When  one  considers  the 
actual  facts  about  most  men,  the  law  of  en- 
vironment seems  a  clumsy  and  superficial  law 
enough.  If  all  that  a  book  can  do  is  to  appeal 
to  the  law  of  environment  for  a  man,  it  does 
not  do  very  much.  The  very  trees  and  stones 
do  better  for  him,  and  the  little  birds  in  their 


Conveniences 


227 


nests.  No  possible  amount  of  environment 
crowded  on  their  frail  souls  would  ever  make 
it  possible  for  most  men  to  catch  up — to  over- 
take enough  truth  before  they  die  to  make 
their  seventy  years  worth  while.  The  majority 
of  men  (one  hardly  dares  to  deny)  can  be  seen, 
sooner  or  later,  drifting  down  to  death  either 
bitterly  or  indifferently.  The  shadows  of  their 
lives  haunt  us  a  little,  then  they  vanish  away 
from  us  and  from  the  sound  of  our  voices. 
Oh,  God,  from  behind  Thy  high  heaven — from 
out  of  Thy  infinite  wealth  of  years,  hast  Thou 
but  the  one  same  pittance  of  threescore  and 
ten  for  every  man  ?  Some  of  us  are  born  with 
the  handicap  of  a  thousand  years  woven  in  the 
nerves  of  bur  bodies,  the  swiftness  of  our 
minds,  and  the  delights  of  our  limbs.  Others 
of  us  are  born  with  the  thousand  years  binding 
us  down  to  blindness  and  hobbling,  holding  us 
back  to  disease,  but  all  with  the  same  Imperi- 
ous Timepiece  held  above  us,  to  run  the  same 
race,  to  overtake  the  same  truth — before  the 
iron  curtain  and  the  dark.  Some  of  us — a  few 
men  in  every  generation — have  two  or  three 
hundred  years  given  to  us  outright  the  day  we 
are  born.  Then  we  are  given  seventy  more. 
Others  of  us  have  two  hundred  years  taken 
away  from  us  the  day  we  are  born.  Then  we 
are  given  seventy  years  to  make  them  up  in, 
and  it  is  called  life. 

If  we  are  to  shut  ourselves  up  with  one  law, 
either  the  law  of  environment  or  the  law  of 


Con» 

vcntcucca 


228 


Xost  Hrt  of 


Con* 
venfences 


heredity,  it  is  obvious  that  the  best  a  logical 
man  could  do,  would  be  to  be  ashamed  of  a 
universe  like  this  and  creep  out  of  it  as  soon  as 
he  could.  The  great  glory  of  a  great  book  is, 
that  it  will  not  let  itself  be  limited  to  the  law 
of  environment  in  dealing  with  a  man.  It 
deals  directly  with  the  man  himself.  It  ap- 
peals to  the  law  of  heredity.  It  reaches  down 
into  the  infinite  depth  of  his  life.  If  a  man 
has  started  a  life  with  parents  he  had  better 
not  have  (for  all  practical  purposes),  it  fur- 
nishes him  with  better  ones.  It  picks  and 
chooses  in  behalf  of  his  life  out  of  his  very 
grandfathers,  for  him.  It  not  only  supplies 
him  with  a  new  set  of  neighbours  as  often  as 
he  wants  them.  It  sees  that  he  is  born  again 
every  morning  on  the  wide  earth  and  that  he 
has  a  new  set  of  parents  to  be  born  to.  It  is 
a  part  of  the  infinite  and  irrepressible  hopeful- 
ness of  this  mortal  life  that  each  man  of  us  who 
dwells  on  the  earth  is  the  child  of  an  infinite 
marriage.  We  are  all  equipped,  even  the 
poorest  of  us,  from  the  day  we  begin,  with  an 
infinite  number  of  fathers  and  an  infinite  num- 
ber of  mothers — no  telling,  as  we  travel  down 
the  jrears,  which  shall  happen  to  us  next.  If 
what  we  call  heredity  were  a  matter  of  a  few 
months, — a  narrow,  pitiful,  two-parent  affair, — 
if  the  fate  of  a  human  being  could  be  shut  in 
with  what  one  man  and  one  woman,  playing 
and  working,  eating  and  drinking,  under 
heaven,  for  a  score  of  years  or  more,  would 


Conveniences 


229 


be  likely  to  have  to  give  him  from  out  of  their 
very  selves,  heredity  would  certainly  be  a 
whimsical,  unjust,  undignified  law  to  come 
into  a  world  by,  to  don  an  immortal  soul 
with.  A  man  who  has  had  his  life  so  reck- 
lessly begun  for  him  could  hardly  be  blamed 
for  being  reckless  with  it  afterward.  But  it 
is  not  true  that  the  principle  of  heredity  in  a 
human  life  can  be  confined  to  a  single  acci- 
dent in  it.  We  are  all  infinite,  and  our 
very  accidents  are  infinite.  In  the  very  flesh 
and  bones  of  our  bodies  we  are  infinite  — 
brought  from  the  furthest  reaches  of  eternity 
and  the  utmost  bounds  of  created  life  to  be 
ourselves.  If  we  were  to  do  nothing  else  for 
threescore  years,  it  is  not  in  our  human  breath 
to  recite  our  fathers'  names  upon  our  lips. 
Each  of  us  is  the  child  of  an  infinite  mother, 
and  from  her  breast,  veiled  in  a  thousand  years, 
we  draw  life,  glory,  sorrow,  sleep,  and  death. 
The  ones  we  call  fathers  and  mothers  are  but 
ambassadors  to  us — delegates  from  a  million 
graves — appointed  for  our  birth.  Every  boy  is 
a  summed-up  multitude.  The  infinite  crowd 
of  his  fathers  beckons  for  him.  As  in  some 
vast  amphitheatre  he  lives  his  life,  before  the 
innumerable  audience  of  the  dead — each  from 
its  circle  of  centuries — calls  to  him,  contends 
for  him,  draws  him  to  himself. 

Inasmuch  as  every  man  who  is  born  in  the 
world  is  born  with  an  infinite  outfit  for  living 
in  it,  it  is  the  office  of  all  books  that  are  true  and 


Con* 

vcnicncca 


230 


Olost  Hrt  of  IReaoina 


Ube 

Cbartcr  of 
possibilitg 


beautiful  books — true  to  the  spirit  of  a  man — 
that  they  shall  play  upon  the  latent  infinity  in 
him;  that  they  shall  help  him  to  select  his 
largest  self;  that  they  shall  help  him  to  give, 
as  the  years  go  on,  the  right  accent  to  the  right 
fathers,  in  his  life. 

Books  are  more  close  to  the  latent  infinity  in 
a  human  being  than  anything  else  can  be,  be- 
cause the  habit  of  the  infinite  is  their  habit. 
As  books  are  more  independent  of  space  and 
time  than  all  other  known  forces  in  the  lives 
of  men,  they  seem  to  make  all  the  men  who 
love  them  independent  also.  If  a  man  has  not 
room  for  his  life,  he  takes  a  book  and  makes 
room  for  it.  When  the  habit  of  books  becomes 
the  habit  of  a  man  he  unhands  himself  at  will 
from  space  and  time;  he  finds  the  universe  is 
his  universe.  He  finds  ancestors  and  neigh- 
bours alike  flocking  to  him — doing  his  bidding. 
God  Himself  says  ' '  Yes ' '  to  him  and  delights 
in  him.  He  has  entered  into  conspiracy  with 
the  nature  of  things.  He  does  not  feel  that  he 
is  being  made.  He  does  not  feel  that  he  is 
making  himself.  The  universe  is  at  work  on 
him— under  his  own  supervision. 

IV 

Gbe  Cbarter  of  possibility 

In  reading  to  select  one's  parents  and  one's 
self,  there  seem  to  be  two  instincts  involved. 


Ube  Cbarter  of  possibility 


231 


These  instincts  may  vary  more  or  less  accord- 
ing to  the  book  and  the  mood  of  the  reader,  but 
the  object  of  all  live  reading — of  every  live  ex- 
perience with  a  book — is  the  satisfying  of  one 
or  both  of  them.  A  man  whose  reading  means 
something  to  him  is  either  letting  himself  go 
in  a  book  or  letting  himself  come  in  it.  He  is 
either  reading  himself  out  or  reading  himself 
in.  It  is  as  if  every  human  life  were  a  kind 
of  port  on  the  edge  of  the  universe,  when 
it  reads,  —  possible  selves  outward  -  bound 
and  inward-bound  trooping  before  It.  Some 
of  these  selves  are  exports  and  some  are  im- 
ports. 

If  the  principle  of  selection  is  conceived  in  a 
large  enough  spirit,  and  is  set  in  operation  soon 
enough,  and  is  continued  long  enough,  there  is 
not  a  child  that  can  be  born  on  the  earth  who 
shall  not  be  able  to  determine  by  the  use  of 
books,  in  the  course  of  the  years,  what  manner 
of  man  he  shall  be.  He  may  not  be  able  to 
determine  how  soon  he  shall  be  that  man,  or 
how  much  of  that  man  shall  be  fulfilled  in  him- 
self before  he  dies,  and  how  much  of  him  shall 
be  left  over  to  be  fulfilled  in  his  children,  but 
the  fact  remains  that  to  an  extraordinary  de- 
gree, through  a  live  use  of  books,  not  only  a 
man's  education  after  he  is  born,  but  his  edu- 
cation before  he  is  born,  is  placed  in  his  hands. 
It  is  the  supreme  office  of  books  that  they  do 
this ;  that  they  place  the  laws  of  heredity  and 
environment  where  a  man  with  a  determined 


Ube 
Cbarter  of 

possibility 


232 


Xost  art  of  TReaoing 


tlbc 

Cbartcr  of 
possibility! 


spirit  can  do  something  besides  cringing  to 
them.  Neither  environment  nor  heredity  — 
taken  by  itself — can  give  a  man  a  determined 
spirit,  but  it  is  everything  to  know  that,  given 
a  few  books  and  the  determined  spirit  both,  a 
man  can  have  any  environment  he  wants  for 
living  his  life,  and  his  own  assorted  ancestors 
for  living  it.  It  is  only  by  means  of  books 
that  a  man  can  keep  from  living  a  partitioned- 
ofF  life  in  the  world — can  keep  toned  up  to  the 
divine  sense  of  possibility  in  it.  We  hear  great 
men  every  day,  across  space  and  time,  halloa- 
ing to  one  another  in  books,  and  across  all 
things,  as  we  feel  and  read,  is  the  call  of  our 
possible  selves.  Even  the  impossible  has  been 
achieved,  books  tell  us,  in  history,  again  and 
again.  It  has  been  achieved  by  several  men. 
This  may  not  prove  very  much,  but  if  it  does 
not  prove  anything  else,  it  proves  that  the 
possible,  at  least,  is  the  privilege  of  the  rest 
of  us.  It  has  its  greeting  for  every  man.  The 
sense  of  the  possible  crowds  around  him,  and 
not  merely  in  his  books  nor  merely  in  his  life, 
but  in  the  place  where  his  life  and  books  meet 
— in  his  soul.  However  or  wherever  a  man 
may  be  placed,  it  is  the  great  book  that  re- 
minds him  Who  he  is.  It  reminds  him  who 
his  Neighbour  is.  It  is  his  charter  of  possibil- 
ity. Having  seen,  he  acts  on  what  he  sees, 
and  reads  himself  out  and  reads  himself  in 
accordingly. 


TTbe  <3reat  <3ame 


233 


V 

(Breat  (Same 


It  would  be  hard  to  say  which  is  the  more 
important,  reading  for  exports  or  imports, 
reading  one's  self  out  or  reading  one's  self  in, 
but  inasmuch  as  the  importance  of  reading  one's 
self  out  is  more  generally  overlooked,  it  may 
be  well  to  dwell  upon  it.  Most  of  the  reading 
theories  of  the  best  people  to-day,  judging 
from  the  prohibitions  of  certain  books,  overlook 
the  importance  altogether,  in  vital  and  normal 
persons  —  especially  the  young,  —  of  reading 
one's  self  out.  It  is  only  as  some  people  keep 
themselves  read  out,  and  read  out  regularly, 
that  they  can  be  kept  from  bringing  evil  on  the 
rest  of  us.  If  Eve  had  had  a  novel,  she  would 
have  sat  down  under  the  Tree  and  read  about 
the  fruit  instead  of  eating  it.  If  Adam  had 
had  a  morning  paper,  he  would  hardly  have 
listened  to  his  wife's  suggestion.  If  the  Evil 
One  had  come  up  to  Eve  in  the  middle  of  Les 
Miserables,  or  one  of  Rossetti's  sonnets,  no  one 
would  ever  have  heard  of  him.  The  main  mis- 
fortune of  Adam  and  Eve  was  that  they  had 
no  arts  to  come  to  the  rescue  of  their  religion. 
If  Eve  could  have  painted  the  apple,  she  would 
not  have  eaten  it.  She  put  it  into  her  mouth 
because  she  could  not  think  of  anything  else 
to  do  with  it,  and  she  had  to  do  something. 
She  had  the  artistic  temperament  (inherited 


Ube  Great 

©amc 


234 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaoina 


•Cbe  (Bceat 

Game 


from  her  mother  Sleep,  probably,  or  from  being 
born  in  a  dream),  and  the  temptation  of  the 
artistic  temperament  is,  that  it  gets  itself  ex- 
pressed or  breaks  something.  She  had  tried 
everything  —  flowers,  birds,  clouds,  and  her 
shadow  in  the  stream,  but  she  found  they  were 
all  inexpressible.  She  could  not  express  them. 
She  could  not  even  express  herself.  Taking 
walks  in  Paradise  and  talking  with  the  one 
man  the  place  afforded  was  not  a  complete  and 
satisfying  self-expression.  Adam  had  his  limi- 
tations— like  all  men.  There  were  things  that 
could  not  be  said. 

Standing  as  we  do  on  the  present  height  of 
history,  with  all  the  resources  of  sympathy  in 
the  modern  world,  its  countless  arts  drawing 
the  sexes  together,  going  about  understanding 
people,  communing  with  them,  and  express- 
ing them,  making  a  community  for  every  man, 
even  in  his  solitude,  it  is  not  hard  to  see  that 
the  comparative  failure  of  the  first  marriage 
was  a  matter  of  course.  The  real  trouble  was 
that  Adam  and  Eve,  standing  in  their  brand- 
new  world,  could  not  express  themselves  to 
one  another.  As  there  was  nothing  else  to 
express  them,  they  were  bored.  It  is  to  Eve's 
credit  that  she  was  more  bored  than  Adam 
was,  and  that  she  resented  it  more;  and  while 
a  Fall,  under  the  circumstances,  was  as  painful 
as  it  was  inevitable,  and  a  rather  extreme 
measure  on  Eve's  part,  no  one  will  deny  that 
it  afforded  relief  on  the  main  point.  It  seems 


ZTbe  (Breat  Game 


235 


to  be  the  universal  instinct  of  all  Eve's  sons 
and  daughters  that  have  followed  since,  that  an 
expressive  world  is  better  than  a  dull  one. 
An  expressive  world  is  a  world  in  which  all 
the  men  and  women  are  getting  themselves 
expressed,  either  in  their  experiences  or  in 
their  arts — that  is,  in  other  people's  experi- 
ences. 

The  play,  the  picture,  and  the  poem  and  the 
novel  and  the  symphony  have  all  been  the  out- 
growth of  Eve's  infinity.  She  could  not  con- 
tain herself.  She  either  had  more  experience 
than  she  could  express,  or  she  had  more  to 
express  than  she  could  possibly  put  into  ex- 
perience. 

One  of  the  worst  things  that  we  know  about 
the  Japanese  is  that  they  have  no  imperative 
mood  in  the  language.  To  be  able  to  say  of  a 
nation  that  it  has  been  able  to  live  for  thou- 
sands of  years  without  feeling  the  need  of  an 
imperative,  is  one  of  the  most  terrible  and 
sweeping  accusations  that  has  ever  been  made 
against  a  people  on  the  earth.  Swearing  may 
not  be  respectable,  but  it  is  a  great  deal  more 
respectable  than  never  wanting  to.  Either  a 
man  is  dead  in  this  world,  or  he  is  out  looking 
for  words  on  it.  There  is  a  great  place  left 
over  in  him,  and  as  long  as  that  place  is  left 
over,  it  is  one  of  the  practical  purposes  of 
books  to  make  it  of  some  use  to  him.  Whether 
the  place  is  a  good  one  or  a  bad  one,  something 
must  be  done  with  it,  and  books  must  do  it. 


Ube  (Breat 

(Same 


236 


%ost  art  of  IReaoina 


be  Great 
Came 


If  there  were  wordlessness  for  five  hundred 
years,  man  would  seek  vast  inarticulate  words 
for  himself.  Cathedrals  would  rise  from  the 
ground  undreamed  as  yet  to  say  we  worshipped. 
Music  would  be  the  daily  necessity  of  the 
humblest  life.  Orchestras  all  around  the  world 
would  be  created,  —  would  float  language 
around  the  dumbness  in  it.  Composers  would 
become  the  greatest,  the  most  practical  men 
in  all  the  nations.  Viaducts  would  stretch 
their  mountains  of  stone  across  the  valleys  to 
find  a  word  that  said  we  were  strong.  Out  of 
the  stones  of  the  hills,  the  mists  of  rivers,  out 
of  electricity,  even  out  of  silence  itself,  we 
would  force  expression.  From  the  time  a  baby 
first  moves  his  limbs  to  when — an  old  man — he 
struggles  for  his  last  breath,  the  one  imperious 
divine  necessity  of  life  is  expression.  Hence 
the  artist  now  and  for  ever — the  ruler  of  his- 
tory— whoever  makes  it.  And  if  he  cannot 
make  it,  he  makes  the  makers  of  it.  The 
artist  is  the  man  who,  failing  to  find  neigh- 
bours for  himself,  makes  his  neighbours  with 
his  own  hands.  If  a  woman  is  childless,  she 
paints  Madonnas.  It  is  the  inspiration,  the 
despair  that  rests  over  all  life.  If  we  cannot 
express  ourselves  in  things  that  are  made,  we 
make  things,  and  if  we  cannot  express  our- 
selves in  the  things  we  make,  we  turn  to 
words,  and  if  we  cannot  express  ourselves  in 
words,  we  turn  to  other  men's  words. 

The  man  who  is  satisfied  with  one  life  does 


Ube  (Breat  <3ame 


237 


not  exist.  The  suicide  does  not  commit  suicide 
because  he  is  tired  of  life,  but  because  he  wants 
so  many  more  lives  that  he  cannot  have.  The 
native  of  the  tropics  buys  a  book  to  the  North 
Pole.  If  we  are  poor,  we  grow  rich  on  paper. 
We  roll  in  carriages  through  the  highway  of 
letters.  If  we  are  rich,  we  revel  in  a  printed 
poverty.  We  cry  our  hearts  out  over  our 
starving  paper-children  and  hold  our  shivering, 
aching  magazine  hands  over  dying  coals  in 
garrets  we  live  in  by  subscription  at  three  dol- 
lars a  year.  The  Bible  is  the  book  that  has 
influenced  men  most  in  the  world  because  it 
has  expressed  them  the  most.  The  moment 
it  ceases  to  be  the  most  expressive  book,  it  will 
cease  to  be  the  most  practical  and  effective  one 
in  human  life.  There  is  more  of  us  than  we 
can  live.  The  touch  of  the  infinite  through 
which  our  spirits  wandered  is  still  upon  us. 
The  world  cries  to  the  poet:  "  Give  me  a  new 
word — a  word — a  word!  I  will  have  a  word !  " 
It  cries  to  the  great  man  out  of  all  its  narrow 
places:  "  Give  me  another  life!  I  will  have  a 
new  life ! ' '  and  every  hero  the  world  has 
known  is  worn  threadbare  with  worship,  be- 
cause his  life  says  for  other  men  what  their 
lives  have  tried  to  say.  Every  masterful  life 
calls  across  the  world  a  cry  of  liberty  to  pent- 
up  dreams,  to  the  ache  of  faith  in  all  of  us, 
' '  Here  thou  art  my  brother — this  is  thy  heart 
that  I  have  lived."  A  hero  is  immortalised 
because  his  life  is  every  man's  larger  self.  So 


Ube  Great 
$ame 


238 


SLost  Hrt  of  IReaMng 


Hbc  <5reat 

Came 


through  the  day-span  of  our  years — a  tale  that 
is  never  told — we  wander  on,  the  infinite  heart 
of  each  of  us  prisoned  in  blood  and  flesh  and 
the  cry  of  us  everywhere,  throughout  all  be- 
ing, "  Give  me  room!  "  It  cries  to  the  com- 
poser, "  Make  a  high  wide  place  for  me!  "  and 
on  the  edge  of  the  silence  between  life  and 
words,  to  music  we  come  at  last  because  it  is 
the  supreme  confidante  of  the  human  heart, 
the  confessional,  the  world-priest  between  the 
actual  self  and  the  larger  self  of  all  of  us.  With 
all  the  multiplying  of  arts  and  the  piling  up  of 
books  that  have  come  to  us,  the  most  important 
experience  that  men  have  had  in  this  world 
since  they  began  on  it,  is  that  they  are  infinite, 
that  they  cannot  be  expressed  on  it.  It  is  not 
infrequently  said  that  men  must  get  themselves 
expressed  in  living,  but  the  fact  remains  that 
no  one  has  ever  heard  of  a  man  as  yet  who 
really  did  it,  or  who  was  small  enough  to  do  it. 
There  was  One  who  seemed  to  express  Himself 
by  living  and  by  dying  both,  but  if  He  had  any 
more  than  succeeded  in  beginning  to  express 
Himself,  no  one  would  have  believed  that  He 
was  the  Son  of  God, — even  that  He  was  the 
Son  of  Man.  It  was  because  He  could  not 
crowd  all  that  He  was  into  thirty-three  short 
years  and  twelve  disciples  and  one  Garden  of 
Gethsemane  and  one  Cross  that  we  know  who 
He  was. 

Riveted  down  to  its  little  place  with  iron  cir- 
cumstance,  the  actual  self  in  every  man  de- 


©utwarfc  Bounfc 


239 


pends  upon  the  larger  possible  self  for  the 
something  that  makes  the  actual  self  worth 
while.  It  is  hard  to  be  held  down  by  circum- 
stance, but  it  would  be  harder  to  be  contented 
there,  to  live  without  those  intimations  of  our 
diviner  birth  that  come  to  us  in  books — books 
that  weave  some  of  the  glory  we  have  missed 
in  our  actual  lives,  into  the  glory  of  our 
thoughts.  Even  if  life  be  to  the  uttermost  the 
doing  of  what  are  called  practical  things,  it  is 
only  by  the  occasional  use  of  his  imagination  in 
reading  or  otherwise,  that  the  practical  man 
can  hope  to  be  in  physical  or  mental  condition 
to  do  them.  He  needs  a  rest  from  his  actual 
self.  A  man  cannot  even  be  practical  without 
this  imaginary  or  larger  self.  Unless  he  can 
work  off  his  unexpressed  remnant,  his  limbs 
are  not  free.  Even  down  to  the  meanest  of 
us,  we  are  incurably  larger  than  anything  we 
can  do. 

Reading  a  book  is  a  game  a  man  plays  with 
his  own  infinity. 

VI 

©utwarb  Bounfc 

If  there  could  only  be  arranged  some  mystical 
place  over  the  edge  of  human  existence,  where 
we  all  could  go  and  practise  at  living,  have 
full-dress  rehearsals  of  our  parts,  before  we  are 
hustled  in  front  of  the  footlights  in  our  very 


OutwarS 


240 


Xost  art  of  TReaoing 


Gut\var5 
36oun& 


swaddling  clothes,  how  many  people  are  there 
who  have  reached  what  are  fabulously  called 
years  of  discretion,  who  would  not  believe  in 
such  a  place,  and  who  would  not  gladly  go 
back  to  it  and  spend  most  of  the  rest  of  their 
lives  there  ? 

This  is  one  of  the  things  that  the  world  of 
books  is  for.  Most  of  us  would  hardly  know 
what  to  do  without  it,  the  world  of  books,  if 
only  as  a  place  to  make  mistakes  and  to  feel 
foolish  in.  It  seems  to  be  the  one  great  un- 
observed retreat,  where  all  the  sons  of  men 
may  go,  may  be  seen  flocking  day  and  night, 
to  get  the  experiences  they  would  not  have, 
to  be  ready  for  those  they  cannot  help  hav- 
ing. It  is  the  Rehearsal  Room  of  History. 
The  gods  watch  it — this  Place  of  Books — as  we 
who  live  go  silent,  trooping  back  and  forth  in 
it  —  the  ceaseless,  heartless,  awful,  beautiful 
pantomime  of  life. 

It  seems  to  be  the  testimony  of  human  na- 
ture, after  a  somewhat  immemorial  experience, 
that  some  things  in  us  had  better  be  expressed 
by  being  lived,  and  that  other  things  had  better 
be  expressed — if  possible — in  some  other  way. 

There  are  a  great  many  men,  even  amongst 
the  wisest  and  strongest  of  us,  who  benefit  every 
year  of  their  lives  by  what  might  be  called  the 
purgative  function  of  literature, — men  who,  if 
they  did  not  have  a  chance  at  the  right  mo- 
ment to  commit  certain  sins  with  their  imagin- 
ary selves,  would  commit  them  with  their  real 


©utwarfc  Bounfc 


241 


ones.  Many  a  man  of  the  larger  and  more 
comprehensive  type,  hungering  for  the  heart 
of  all  experience,  bound  to  have  its  spirit,  if 
not  itself,  has  run  the  whole  gamut  of  his  pos- 
sible selves  in  books,  until  all  the  sins  and  all 
the  songs  of  men  have  coursed  through  his 
being.  He  finds  himself  reading  not  only  to 
fill  his  lungs  with  ozone  and  his  heart  with 
the  strength  of  the  gods,  but  to  work  off  the 
humour  in  his  blood,  to  express  his  underself, 
and  get  it  out  of  the  way.  Women  who  never 
cry  their  tears  out — it  is  said — are  desperate, 
and  men  who  never  read  their  sins  away  are 
dangerous.  People  who  are  tired  of  doing 
wrong  on  paper  do  right.  To  be  sick  of  one's 
sins  in  a  book  saves  not  only  one's  self  but 
every  one  else  a  deal  of  trouble.  A  man  has 
not  learned  how  to  read  until  he  reads  with 
his  veins  as  well  as  his  arteries. 

It  would  be  useless  to  try  to  make  out  that 
evil  passions  in  literature  accomplish  any  ab- 
solute good,  but  they  accomplish  a  relative 
good  which  the  world  can  by  no  means  afford 
to  overlook.  The  amount  of  crime  that  is  sug- 
gested by  reading  can  be  more  than  offset  by 
the  extraordinary  amount  of  crime  waiting  in 
the  hearts  of  men,  aimed  at  the  world  and 
glanced  off  on  paper. 

There  are  many  indications  that  this  purga- 
tive function  of  literature  is  the  main  thing  it 
is  for  in  our  present  modern  life.  Modern  life 
is  so  constituted  that  the  majority  of  people 


OutwarS 
XSounB 


242 


%ost  Brt  of  TReafcing 


©utwat* 


who  live  in  it  are  expressing  their  real  selves 
more  truly  in  their  reading  than  they  are  in 
their  lives.  When  one  stops  to  consider  what 
these  lives  are— most  of  them  — there  can  be 
but  one  conclusion  about  the  reading  of  the 
people  who  have  to  live  them,  and  that  is  that 
while  sensational  reading  may  be  an  evil,  as 
compared  with  the  evil  that  has  made  it  neces- 
sary, it  is  an  immeasurable  blessing. 

The  most  important  literary  and  artistic  fact 
of  the  nineteenth  century  is  the  subdivision  of 
labour — that  is,  the  subdividing  of  every  man's 
life  and  telling  him  he  must  only  be  alive  in  a 
part  of  it.  In  proportion  as  an  age  takes  sen- 
sations out  of  men's  lives  it  is  obliged  to  put 
them  into  their  literature.  Men  are  used  to 
sensations  on  the  earth  as  long  as  they  stay  on 
it  and  they  are  bound  to  have  them  in  one  way 
or  another.  An  age  which  narrows  the  actual 
lives  of  men,  which  so  adjusts  the  labour  of  the 
world  that  nearly  every  man  in  it  not  only 
works  with  a  machine,  spiritual  or  otherwise, 
but  is  a  machine  himself,  and  a  small  part  of  a 
machine,  must  not  find  fault  with  its  art  for 
being  full  of  hysterics  and  excitement,  or  with 
its  newspapers  for  being  sensational.  Instead 
of  finding  fault  it  has  every  reason  to  be  grate- 
ful— to  thank  a  most  merciful  Heaven  that  the 
men  in  the  world  are  still  alive  enough  in  it  to 
be  capable  of  feeling  sensation  in  other  men's 
lives,  though  they  have  ceased  to  be  capable 
of  having  sensations  in  their  own,  or  of  feeling 


©utwarfc  JSount)  243 

sensations  if  they  had  them.  It  was  when  the 
herds  of  her  people  were  buried  in  routine  and 
peace  that  Rome  had  bull-fights.  New  York, 
with  its  hordes  of  drudges,  ledger-slaves,  ma- 
chinists, and  clerks,  has  the  New  York  World. 
It  lasts  longer  than  a  bull-fight  and  it  can  be 
had  every  morning  before  a  man  starts  off  to 
be  a  machine  and  every  evening  when  he  gets 
back  from  being  a  machine — for  one  cent.  On 
Sunday  a  whole  Colosseum  fronts  him  and  he  is 
glutted  with  gore  from  morning  until  night. 
To  a  man  who  is  a  penholder  by  the  week,  or 
a  linotype  machine,  or  a  ratchet  in  a  factory,  a 
fight  is  infinite  peace.  Obedience  to  the  com- 
mand of  Scripture,  making  the  Sabbath  a  day 
of  rest,  is  entirely  relative.  Some  of  us  are 
rested  by  taking  our  under-interested  lives  to 
a  Sunday  paper,  and  others  are  rested  by  tak- 
ing our  over-interested  lives  to  church.  Men 
read  dime  novels  in  proportion  as  their  lives 
are  staid  and  mechanical.  Men  whose  lives 
are  their  own  dime  novels  are  bored  by  printed 
ones.  Men  whose  years  are  crowded  with 
crises,  culminations,  and  events,  who  run  the 
most  risks  in  business,  are  found  with  the 
steadiest  papers  in  their  hands.  The  train-boy 
knows  that  the  people  who  buy  the  biggest 
headlines  are  all  on  salaries  and  that  danger 
and  blood  and  thunder  are  being  read  nowa- 
days by  effeminately  safe  men,  because  it  is  the 
only  way  they  can  be  had. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  things  that  are  left  out 


244 


%ost  Hrt  ot 


Qutwavt> 
SSounS 


of  men's  lives  but  the  things  they  have  too 
much  of,  which  find  their  remedy  in  books. 
They  are  the  levers  with  which  the  morbid  is 
controlled.  Similia  similibus  curantur  may  be 
a  dangerous  principle  to  be  applied  by  every- 
body, but  thousands  of  men  and  women  mulling 
away  on  their  lives  and  worrying  themselves 
with  themselves,  cutting  a  wide  swath  of  misery 
wherever  they  go,  have  suddenly  stopped  in  a 
book — have  purged  away  jealousy  and  despair 
and  passion  and  nervous  prostration  in  it.  A 
paper-person  with  melancholia  is  a  better  cure 
for  gloom  than  a  live  clown  can  be  —  who 
merely  goes  about  reminding  people  how  sad 
they  are. 

A  man  is  often  heard  to  say  that  he  has 
tragedy  enough  in  his  own  life  not  to  want  to 
go  to  a  play  for  more,  but  this  much  having 
been  said  and  truly  said,  he  almost  always  goes 
to  the  play — to  see  how  true  it  is.  The  stage 
is  his  huge  confidante.  Pitying  one's  self  is 
a  luxury,  but  it  takes  a  great  while,  and  one 
can  never  do  it  enough.  Being  pitied  by  a 
five-thousand-dollar  house,  and  with  incidental 
music,  all  for  a  dollar  and  a  half,  is  a  sure  and 
quick  way  to  cheer  up.  Being  pitied  by  Victor 
Hugo  is  a  sure  way  also.  Hardy  can  do  peo- 
ple's pitying  for  them  much  better  than  they 
can  do  it,  and  it  's  soon  over  and  done  with. 
It  is  noticeable  that  while  the  impressive  books, 
the  books  that  are  written  to  impress  people, 
have  a  fair  and  nominal  patronage,  it  is  the 


©utwarfc 


245 


expressive  books,  the  books  that  let  people 
out,  which  have  the  enormous  sales.  This 
seems  to  be  true  of  the  big-sale  books  whether 
the  people  expressed  in  them  are  worth  ex- 
pressing (to  any  one  but  themselves)  or  not. 
The  principle  of  getting  one's  self  expressed  is 
so  largely  in  evidence  that  not  only  the  best  but 
the  worst  of  our  books  illustrate  it.  Our  popu- 
lar books  are  carbuncles  mostly.  They  are  the 
inevitable  and  irrepressible  form  of  the  instinct 
of  health  in  us,  struggling  with  disease.  On 
the  whole,  it  makes  being  an  optimist  in 
modern  life  a  little  less  of  a  tight-rope-walk. 
If  even  the  bad  elements  in  current  literature 
— which  are  discouraging  enough — are  making 
us  better,  what  shall  be  said  of  the  good  ? 


©utwarfc 
3Boun& 


247 


Book  III 

Details,    Ube  Confessions  of  an 
^Unscientific  flDino 


i — Unscientific 


249 


©n 


Untelligent  in  a 


I  HAVE  a  way  every  two  or  three  days  or 
so,  of  an  afternoon,  of  going  down  to  our 
library,  sliding  into  the  little  gate  by  the 
shelves,  and  taking  a  long  empty  walk  there. 
I  have  found  that  nothing  quite  takes  the  place 
of  it  for  me,  —  wandering  up  and  down  the  aisles 
of  my  ignorance,  letting  myself  be  loomed  at, 
staring  doggedly  back.  I  always  feel  when  I 
go  out  the  great  door  as  if  I  had  won  a  victory. 
I  have  at  least  faced  the  facts.  I  swing  off  to 
my  tramp  on  the  hills  where  is  the  sense  of 
space,  as  if  I  had  faced  the  bully  of  the  world, 
the  whole  assembled  world,  in  his  own  den, 
and  he  had  given  me  a  license  to  live. 

Of  course  it  only  lasts  a  little  while.     One 
soon  feels  a  library  nowadays  pulling  on  him. 


On  IScing 

Intelligent 

in  a 

Uibrarv 


250 


%ost  art  ot 


©n  SScing 
Intelligent 

in  a 
library 


One  has  to  go  back  and  do  it  all  over  again,  but 
for  the  time  being  it  affords  infinite  relief.  It 
sets  one  in  right  relations  to  the  universe,  to 
the  original  plan  of  things.  One  suspects  that 
if  God  had  originally  intended  that  men  on  this 
planet  should  be  crowded  off  by  books  on  it,  it 
would  not  have  been  put  off  to  the  twentieth 
century. 

I  was  saying  something  of  this  sort  to  The 
Presiding  Genius  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts 
the  other  day,  and  when  I  was  through  he  said 
promptly :  ' '  The  way  a  man  feels  in  a  library 
(if  any  one  can  get  him  to  tell  it)  lets  out  more 
about  a  man  than  anything  else  in  the  world." 

It  did  not  seem  best  to  make  a  reply  to  this. 
I  did  n't  think  it  would  do  either  of  us  any 
good. 

Finally,  in  spite  of  myself,  I  spoke  up  and 
allowed  that  I  felt  as  intelligent  in  a  library  as 
anybody. 

He  did  not  say  anything. 

When  I  asked  him  what  he  thought  being 
intelligent  in  a  library  was,  he  took  the  general 
ground  that  it  consisted  in  always  knowing 
what  one  was  about  there,  in  knowing  exactly 
what  one  wanted. 

I  replied  that  I  did  not  think  that  that  was  a 
very  intelligent  state  of  mind  to  be  in,  in  a 
library. 

Then  I  waited  while  he  told  me  (fifteen  min- 
utes) what  an  intelligent  mind  was  anywhere 
(nearly  everywhere,  it  seemed  to  me).  But  I 


©n  iJBelno  flntellioent  in  a 


251 


did  not  wait  in  vain,  and  at  last,  when  he  had 
come  around  to  it,  and  had  asked  me  what  I 
thought  the  feeling  of  intelligence  consisted  in, 
in  libraries,  I  said  it  consisted  in  being  pulled 
on  by  the  books. 

I  said  quite  a  little  after  this,  and  of  course 
the  general  run  of  my  argument  was  that  I  was 
rather  intelligent  myself.  The  P.  G.  S.  of  M. 
had  little  to  say  to  this,  and  after  he  had  said 
how  intelligent  he  was  awhile,  the  conversation 
was  dropped. 

The  question  that  concerns  me  is,  What  shall 
a  man  do,  how  shall  he  act,  when  he  finds  him- 
self in  the  hush  of  a  great  library, — opens  the 
door  upon  it,  stands  and  waits  in  the  midst  of 
it,  with  his  poor  outstretched  soul  all  by  him- 
self before  IT, — and  feels  the  books  pulling  on 
him  ?  I  always  feel  as  if  it  were  a  sort  of  in- 
finite crossroads.  The  last  thing  I  want  to 
know  in  a  library  is  exactly  what  I  want  there. 
I  am  tired  of  knowing  what  I  want.  I  am  al- 
ways knowing  what  I  want.  I  can  know  what 
I  want  almost  anywhere.  If  there  is  a  place 
left  on  God's  earth  where  a  modern  man  can 
go  and  go  regularly  and  not  know  what  he 
wants  awhile,  in  Heaven's  name  why  not  let 
him  ?  I  am  as  fond  as  the  next  man,  I  think, 
of  knowing  what  I  am  about,  but  when  I  find 
myself  ushered  into  a  great  library  I  do  not 
know  what  I  am  about  any  sooner  than  I  can 
help.  I  shall  know  soon  enough — God  forgive 


On  36ef  ng 
Intelligent 

in  a 
library 


252 


OLost  Hrt  of  IReaoina 


On  Keing 
Intelligent 

in  a 
library 


me !  When  it  is  given  to  a  man  to  stand  in  the 
Assembly  Room  of  Nations,  to  feel  the  ages, 
all  the  ages,  gathering  around  him,  flowing 
past  his  life;  to  listen  to  the  immortal  stir  of 
Thought,  to  the  doings  of  The  Dead,  why 
should  a  man  interrupt  —  interrupt  a  whole 
world — to  know  what  he  is  about  ?  I  stand  at  the 
j  unction  of  all  Time  and  Space.  I  am  the  three 
tenses.  I  read  the  newspaper  of  the  universe. 

It  fades  away  after  a  little,  I  know.  I  go  to 
the  card  catalogue  like  a  lamb  to  the  slaughter, 
poke  my  head  into  Knowledge — somewhere — 
and  am  lost,  but  the  light  of  it  on  the  spirit 
does  not  fade  away.  It  leaves  a  glow  there. 
It  plays  on  the  pages  afterward. 

There  is  a  certain  fine  excitement  about  tak- 
ing a  library  in  this  fashion,  a  sense  of  spacious- 
ness of  joy  in  it,  which  one  is  almost  always 
sure  to  miss  in  libraries — most  libraries — by 
staying  in  them.  The  only  way  one  can  get 
any  real  good  out  of  a  modern  library  seems  to 
be  by  going  away  in  the  nick  of  time.  If  one 
stays  there  is  no  help  for  it.  One  is  soon  stand- 
ing before  the  card  catalogue,  sorting  one's  wits 
out  in  it,  filing  them  away,  and  the  sense  of 
boundlessness  both  in  one's  self  and  everybody 
else — the  thing  a  library  is  for — is  fenced  off 
for  ever. 

At  least  it  seems  fenced  off  for  ever.  One  sees 
the  universe  barred  and  patterned  off  with  a 
kind  of  grating  before  it.  It  is  a  card-catalogue 
universe. 


Ibow  fit  ffeels  253 

I  can  only  speak  for  one,  but  I  must  say  for 
myself,  that  as  compared  with  this  feeling  one 
has  in  the  door,  this  feeling  of  standing  over  a 
library — mere  reading  in  it,  sitting  down  and 
letting  one's  self  be  tucked  into  a  single  book 
in  it — is  a  humiliating  experience. 

II 

Ibow  flt  jfeete 

I  am  not  unaware  that  this  will  seem  to  some 
— this  empty  doting  on  infinity,  this  standing 
and  staring  at  All-knowledge — a  mere  dizzying 
exercise,  whirlingone's  head  round  and  round  in 
Nothing,  for  Nothing.  And  I  am  not  unaware 
that  it  would  be  unbecoming  in  me  or  in  any 
other  man  to  feel  superior  to  a  card  catalogue. 

A  card  catalogue,  of  course,  as  a  device  for 
making  a  kind  of  tunnel  for  one's  mind  in  a 
library — for  working  one's  way  through  it — is 
useful  and  necessary  to  all  of  us.  Certainly,  if 
a  man  insists  on  having  infinity  in  a  convenient 
form — infinity  in  a  box — it  would  be  hard  to 
find  anything  better  to  have  it  in  than  a  card 
catalogue. 

But  there  are  times  when  one  does  not  want 
infinity  in  a  box.  He  loses  the  best  part  of  it 
that  way.  He  prefers  it  in  its  natural  state. 
All  that  I  am  contending  for  is,  that  when  these 
times  come,  the  times  when  a  man  likes  to  feel 
infinite  knowledge  crowding  round  him, — feel 


254 


Xost  Hrt  of 


fx>\x>  a 

Specialist 

can  S3e  an 

Efcucatefc 

flDan 


it  through  the  backs  of  unopened  books,  and 
likes  to  stand  still  and  think  about  it,  worship 
with  the  thought  of  it,  —  he  ought  to  be  allowed 
to.  It  is  true  that  there  is  no  sign  up  against 
it  (against  thinking  in  libraries).  But  there 
might  as  well  be.  It  amounts  to  the  same 
thing.  No  one  is  expected  to.  People  are  ex- 
pected to  keep  up  an  appearance,  at  least,  of 
doing  something  else  there.  I  do  not  dare  to 
hope  that  the  next  time  I  am  caught  standing 
and  staring  in  a  library,  with  a  kind  of  blank, 
happy  look,  I  shall  not  be  considered  by  all  my 
kind  intellectually  disreputable  for  it.  I  admit 
that  it  does  not  look  intelligent  —  this  standing 
by  a  door  and  taking  in  a  sweep  of  books  —  this 
reading  a  whole  library  at  once.  I  can  im- 
agine how  it  looks.  It  looks  like  listening  to  a 
kind  of  cloth  and  paper  chorus  —  foolish  enough  ; 
but  if  I  go  out  of  the  door  to  the  hills  again, 
refreshed  for  them  and  lifted  up  to  them,  with 
the  strength  of  the  ages  in  my  limbs,  great 
voices  all  around  me,  flocking  my  solitary  walk 
—  who  shall  gainsay  me  ? 

Ill 

Ibow  a  Specialist  can  Be  an 
fIDan 


It  is  a  sad  thing  to  go  into  a  library  nowa- 
days and  watch  the  people  there  who  are 
merely  making  tunnels  through  it.  Some  lib- 


1bow  a  Specialist  can  3Be  an  E&ucatefc  flDan 


255 


raries  are  worse  than  others — seem  to  be  made 
for  tunnels.  College  libraries,  perhaps,  are  the 
worst.  One  can  almost — if  one  stands  still 
enough  in  them — hear  what  is  going  on.  It  is 
getting  to  be  practically  impossible  in  a  college 
library  to  slink  off  to  a  side  shelf  by  one's  self, 
take  down  some  gentle-hearted  book  one  does 
not  need  to  read  there  and  begin  to  listen  in  it, 
without  hearing  some  worthy  person  quietly, 
persistently  boring  himself  around  the  next 
corner.  It  is  getting  worse  every  year.  The 
only  way  a  readable  library  book  can  be  read 
nowadays  is  to  take  it  away  from  the  rest  of 
them.  It  must  be  taken  where  no  other  read- 
ing is  going  on.  The  busy  scene  of  a  crowd  of 
people — mere  specialists  and  others — gathered 
around  roofing  their  minds  in  is  no  fitting 
place  for  a  great  book  or  a  live  book  to  be  read 
— a  book  that  uncovers  the  universe. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  were  certainly  a  trying 
universe  if  it  were  uncovered  all  the  time,  if 
one  had  to  be  exposed  to  all  of  it  and  to  all  of 
it  at  once,  always;  and  there  is  no  denying  that 
libraries  were  intended  to  roof  men's  minds  in 
sometimes  as  well  as  to  take  the  roofs  of  their 
minds  off.  What  seems  to  be  necessary  is  to 
find  some  middle  course  in  reading  between  the 
scientist's  habit  of  tunnelling  under  the  dome 
of  knowledge  and  the  poet's  habit  of  soaring 
around  in  it.  There  ought  to  be  some  princi- 
ple of  economy  in  knowledge  which  will  allow 
a  man,  if  he  wants  to,  or  knows  enough,  to  be  a 


fjow  a 
Specialist 
can  36e  an 

Educated 
/•Dan 


256 


%o0t  Brt  of  IReaoina 


•fcowa 
Specialist 
can  S3e  an 

JEJmcatcfi 
/Ban 


poet  and  a  scientist  both.  It  is  well  enough  for 
a  mere  poet  to  take  a  library  as  a  spectacle — a 
kind  of  perpetual  L,ick  Observatory  to  peek  at 
the  universe  with,  if  he  likes,  and  if  a  man  is  a 
mere  scientist,  there  is  no  objection  to  his  tak- 
ing a  library  as  a  kind  of  vast  tunnel  system, 
or  chart  for  burrowing.  But  the  common  edu- 
cated man — the  man  who  is  in  the  business  of 
being  a  human  being,  unless  he  knows  some 
middle  course  in  a  library,  knows  how  to  use 
its  Lick  Observatory  and  its  tunnel  system 
both — does  not  get  very  much  out  of  it.  If 
there  can  be  found  some  principle  of  economy 
in  knowledge,  common  to  artists  and  scientists 
alike,  which  will  make  it  possible  for  a  poet  to 
know  something,  and  which  will  make  it  pos- 
sible for  a  scientist  to  know  a  very  great  deal 
without  being — to  most  people — a  little  under- 
witted,  it  would  very  much  simplify  the  prob- 
lem of  being  educated  in  modern  times,  and 
there  would  be  a  general  gratefulness. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  seem  to  wish  to  claim 
this  general  gratefulness  for  myself.  I  have  no 
world-reforming  feeling  about  the  matter.  I 
would  be  very  grateful  just  here  to  be  allowed 
to  tuck  in  a  little  idea — no  chart  to  go  with  it 
— on  this  general  subject,  which  my  mind 
keeps  coming  back  to,  as  it  runs  around 
watching  people. 

There  seem  to  be  but  two  ways  of  knowing. 
One  of  them  is  by  the  spirit  and  the  other  is  by 
the  letter.  The  most  reasonable  principle  of 


1bow  a  Specialist  can  3Be  an  Educates  /IDan 

economy  in  knowledge  would  seem  to  be,  that 
in  all  reading  that  pertains  to  man's  specialty 
— his  business  in  knowledge — he  should  read  by 
the  letter,  knowing  the  facts  by  observing  them 
himself,  and  that  in  all  other  reading  he  should 
read  through  the  spirit  or  imagination — the 
power  of  taking  to  one's  self  facts  that  have 
been  observed  by  others.  If  a  man  wants 
to  be  a  specialist  he  must  do  his  knowing 
like  a  scientist;  but  if  a  scientist  wants  to  be 
a  man  he  must  be  a  poet ;  he  must  learn  how 
to  read  like  a  poet;  he  must  educate  in  himself 
the  power  of  absorbing  immeasurable  know- 
ledge, the  facts  of  which  have  been  approved 
and  observed  by  others. 

The  weak  point  in  our  modern  education 
seems  to  be  that  it  has  broken  altogether  with 
the  spirit  or  the  imagination.  Playing  upon 
the  spirit  or  the  imagination  of  a  man  is  the 
one  method  possible  to  employ  in  educating 
him  in  everything  except  his  specialty.  It  is 
the  one  method  possible  to  employ  in  making 
even  a  powerful  specialist  of  him ;  in  relating 
his  specialty  to  other  specialties;  that  is,  in 
making  either  him  or  his  specialty  worth  while. 

Inasmuch  as  it  has  been  decreed  that  every 
man  in  modern  life  must  be  a  specialist,  the 
fundamental  problem  that  confronts  modern 
education  is,  How  can  a  specialist  be  an  edu- 
cated man  ?  There  would  seem  to  be  but  one 
way  a  specialist  can  be  an  educated  man.  The 
only  hope  for  a  specialist  lies  in  his  being 


257 


Ijow  a 

Specialist 
can  JBe  an 

Educates 


258 


%ost  Hrt  ot 


Ubetr 

JBacfcs 


allowed  to  have  a  soul  (or  whatever  he  chooses 

tbrou  b  to  ca^  *fc)'  a  spi1^  or  an  imagination.  If  he 
has  This,  whatever  it  is,  in  one  way  or  another, 
he  will  find  his  way  to  every  book  he  needs. 
He  will  read  all  the  books  there  are  in  his 
specialty.  He  will  read  all  other  books  through 
their  backs. 

IV 

<§>n  IReafcing  Books  tbrougb  Gbeir 


As  this  is  the  only  way  the  majority  of  books 
can  be  read  by  anybody,  one  wonders  why  so 
little  has  been  said  about  it. 

Reading  books  through  their  backs  is  easily 
the  most  important  part  of  a  man's  outfit,  if  he 
wishes  to  be  an  educated  man.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  prove  this  statement.  The  books  them- 
selves prove  it  without  even  being  opened. 
The  mere  outside  of  a  library  —  almost  any 
library — would  seem  to  settle  the  point  that  if 
a  man  proposes  to  be  in  any  larger  or  deeper 
sense  a  reader  of  books,  the  books  must  be  read 
through  their  backs. 

Even  the  man  who  is  obliged  to  open  books 
in  order  to  read  them  sooner  or  later  admits 
this.  He  finds  the  few  books  he  opens  in  the 
literal  or  unseeing  way  do  not  make  him  see 
anything.  They  merely  make  him  see  that  he 
ought  to  have  opened  the  others — that  he  must 


TReafcfna  Boofes  tbrouQb  Hbefr  Bacfes 


259 


open  the  others;  that  is,  if  he  is  to  know  any- 
thing. The  next  thing  he  sees  is  that  he  must 
open  all  the  others  to  know  anything.  When 
he  conies  to  know  this  he  may  be  said  to  have 
reached  what  is  called,  by  stretch  of  courtesy, 
a  state  of  mind.  It  is  the  scientific  state  of 
mind.  Any  man  who  has  watched  his  mind  a 
little  knows  what  this  means.  It  is  the  first 
incipient  symptom  in  a  mind  that  science  is 
setting  in. 

The  only  possible  cure  for  it  is  reading  books 
through  their  backs.  As  this  scientific  state  of 
mind  is  the  main  obstacle  nowadays  in  the  way 
of  reading  books  through  their  backs,  it  is  fit- 
ting, perhaps,  at  this  point  that  I  should  dwell 
on  it  a  little. 

I  do  not  claim  to  be  a  scientist,  and  I  have 
never — even  in  my  worst  moments — hoped  for 
a  scientific  mind.  I  am  afraid  I  know  as  well 
as  any  one  who  has  read  as  far  as  this,  in  this 
book,  that  I  cannot  prove  anything.  The  book 
has  at  least  proved  that;  but  it  does  seem  to  me 
that  there  are  certain  things  that  very  much 
need  to  be  said  about  the  scientific  mind,  in  its 
general  relation  to  knowledge.  I  would  give 
the  world  to  be  somebody  else  for  awhile  and 
say  them — right  here  in  the  middle  of  my  book. 
But  I  know  as  well  as  any  one,  after  all  that 
has  passed,  that  if  I  say  anything  about  the 
scientific  mind  nobody  will  believe  it.  The  best 
I  can  do  is  to  say  how  I  feel  about  the  scien- 
tific mind.  "And  what  has  that  to  do  with 


©n  1Rca6- 

ing  3Bocfta 

tbrciujb 

tTbcCr 

Sacfcs 


260 


SLost  Hrt  of 


ing  JBoofts 

tbrougb 

Ubeir 


it?"  exclaims  the  whole  world  and  all  its 
laboratories.  What  is  really  wanted  in  dealing 
with  this  matter  seems  to  be  some  person — 
some  grave,  superficial  person — who  will  take 
the  scientific  mind  up  scientifically,  shake  it 
and  filter  it,  put  it  under  the  microscope,  stare 
at  it  with  a  telescope,  stick  the  X-ray  through 
it,  lay  it  on  the  operating  table — show  what  is 
the  matter  with  it — even  to  itself.  Anything 
that  is  said  about  the  scientific  mind  which  is 
not  said  in  a  big,  bow-wow,  scientific,  imper- 
sonal, out-of-the-universe  sort  of  way  will  not 
go  very  far. 

And  yet,  the  things  that  need  to  be  said 
about  the  scientific  mind — the  things  that  need 
to  be  done  for  it — need  to  be  said  and  done  so 
very  much,  that  it  seems  as  if  almost  any  one 
might  help.  So  I  am  going  to  keep  on  trying. 
L,et  no  one  suppose,  however,  that  because  I 
have  turned  around  the  corner  into  another 
chapter,  I  am  setting  myself  up  as  a  sudden 
and  new  authority  on  the  scientific  mind.  I  do 
not  tell  how  it  feels  to  be  scientific.  I  merely 
tell  how  it  looks  as  if  it  felt. 

I  have  never  known  a  great  scientist,  and  I 
can  only  speak  of  the  kind  of  scientist  I  have 
generally  met — the  kind  every  one  meets  now- 
adays, the  average,  bare  scientist.  He  always 
looks  to  me  as  if  he  had  a  grudge  against  the 
universe — jealous  of  it  or  something.  There 
are  so  many  things  in  it  he  cannot  know  and 
that  he  has  no  use  for  unless  he  does.  It 


©n  "Keeping  J6acb  ©tber  in  Countenance 


261 


always  seems  to  me  (perhaps  it  seems  so  to 
most  of  us  in  this  world,  who  are  running 
around  and  enjoying  things  and  guessing  on 
them)  that  the  average  scientist  has  a  kind  of 
dreary  and  disgruntled  look,  a  look  of  feeling 
left  out.  Nearly  all  of  the  universe  goes  to 
waste  with  a  scientist.  He  fixes  himself  so 
that  it  has  to.  If  a  man  cannot  get  the  good  of 
a  thing  until  he  knows  it  and  knows  all  of  it, 
he  cannot  expect  to  be  happy  in  this  universe. 
There  are  no  conveniences  for  his  being  happy 
in  it.  It  is  the  wrong  size,  to  begin  with. 
Exact  knowledge  at  its  best,  or  even  at  its 
worst,  does  not  let  a  man  into  very  many  things 
in  a  universe  like  this  one.  A  large  part  of  it 
is  left  over  with  a  scientist.  It  is  the  part  that 
is  left  over  which  makes  him  unhappy. 

I  am  not  claiming  that  a  scientist,  simply  be- 
cause he  is  a  scientist,  is  any  unhappier  or 
needs  to  be  any  unhappier  than  other  men  are. 
He  does  not  need  to  be.  It  all  conies  of  a  kind 
of  brutal,  sweeping,  overriding  prejudice  he 
has  against  guessing  on  anything. 


On  1kccp= 
ing  Eacb 
Other  in 
Countena 
ance 


<§>n  "(keeping  iBacb  ©tber  in 
Countenance 

I  do  not  suppose  that  my  philosophising  on 
this  subject — a  sort  of  slow,  peristaltic  action 
of  my  own  mind — is  of  any  particular  value; 


262 


OLost  Hrt  of  1Reaoin0 


ing  Eacb 
O tbcr in 
Countens 

ance 


that  it  really  makes  any  one  feel  any  better  ex- 
cept myself. 

But  it  has  just  occurred  to  me  that  I  may 
have  arisen,  quite  as  well  as  not,  without 
knowing  it,  to  the  dignity  of  the  commonplace. 

"  The  man  who  thinks  he  is  playing  a  solo  in 
any  human  experience,"  says  this  morning's 
paper,  "  only  needs  a  little  more  experience  to 
know  that  he  is  a  member  of  a  chorus."  I 
suspect  myself  of  being  a  Typical  Case.  The 
scientific  mind  has  taken  possession  of  all  the 
land.  It  has  assumed  the  right  of  eminent  do- 
main in  it,  and  there  must  be  other  human  be- 
ings here  and  there,  I  am  sure,  standing  aghast 
at  learning  in  our  modern  day,  even  as  I  am, 
their  whys  and  wherefores  working  within 
them,  trying  to  wonder  their  way  out  in  this 
matter. 

All  that  is  necessary,  as  I  take  it,  is  for  one 
or  the  other  of  us  to  speak  up  in  the  world, 
barely  peep  in  it,  make  himself  known  wher- 
ever he  is,  tell  how  he  feels,  and  he  will  find 
he  is  not  alone.  Then  we  will  get  together. 
We  will  keep  each  other  in  countenance.  We 
will  play  with  our  minds  if  we  want  to.  We 
will  take  the  liberty  of  knowing  rows  of  things 
we  don't  know  all  about,  and  we  will  be  as 
happy  as  we  like,  and  if  we  keep  together  we 
will  manage  to  have  a  fairly  educated  look  be- 
sides. I  am  very  sure  of  this.  But  it  is  the 
sort  of  thing  a  man  cannot  do  alone.  If  he 
tries  to  do  it  with  any  one  else,  any  one  that 


©n  IReeptnQ  Eacb  ©tber  in  Countenance 


263 


happens  along,  he  is  soon  come  up  with.  It 
cannot  be  done  in  that  way.  There  is  no  one 
to  whom  to  turn.  Almost  every  mind  one 
knows  in  this  modern  educated  world  is  a  sus- 
picious, unhappy,  abject,  helpless,  scientific 
mind. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  find  a  typical  edu- 
cated mind,  either  in  this  country  or  in  Europe 
or  anywhere,  that  is  not  a  rolled-over  mind, 
jealous  and  crushed  by  knowledge  day  and 
night,  and  yet  staring  at  its  ignorance  every- 
where. The  scientist  is  almost  always  a  man 
who  takes  his  mind  seriously,  and  he  takes  the 
universe  as  seriously  as  he  takes  his  mind.  In- 
stead of  glorying  in  a  universe  and  being  a  lit- 
tle proud  of  it  for  being  such  an  immeasurable, 
unspeakable,  unknowable  success,  his  whole 
state  of  being  is  one  of  worry  about  it.  The 
universe  seems  to  irritate  him  somehow.  Has 
he  not  spent  years  of  hard  labour  in  making 
his  mind  over,  in  drilling  it  into  not-thinking, 
into  not-inferring  things,  into  not-knowing 
anything  he  does  not  know  all  of  ?  And  yet 
here  he  is  and  here  is  his  whole  life — does  it  not 
consist  in  being  baffled  by  germs  and  bacilli, 
crowed  over  by  atoms,  trampled  on  by  the 
stars  ?  It  is  getting  so  that  there  is  but  one 
thing  left  that  the  modern,  educated  scientific 
mind  feels  that  it  knows,  and  that  is  the  impos- 
sibility of  knowledge.  Certainly  if  there  is  any- 
thing in  this  wide  world  that  can  possibly  be 
in  a  more  helpless,  more  pulp-like  state  than 


ing  Eacb 

Otbcr in 

Countcns 

ance 


264 


%ost  Brt  of  TReaoina 


tfiomancc 
of  Science 


the  scientific  mind  in  the  presence  of  something 
that  cannot  be  known,  something  that  can 
only  be  used  by  being  wondered  at  (which  is 
all  most  of  the  universe  is  for),  it  has  yet  to  be 
pointed  out. 

He  may  be  better  off  than  he  looks,  and  I 
don't  doubt  he  quite  looks  down  on  me  as, 

A  mere  poet, 

The  Chanticleer  of  Things, 

Who  lives  to  flap  his  wings  — 

It  's  all  he  knows,  — 

They  're  never  furled  ; 

Who  plants  his  feet 

On  the  ridge-pole  of  the  world 

And  crows. 

Still,  I  like  it  very  well.  I  don't  know  any- 
thing better  that  can  be  done  with  the  world, 
and  as  I  have  said  before  I  say  again,  my 
friend  and  brother,  the  scientist,  is  either  very 
great  or  very  small,  or  he  is  moderately,  de- 
cently unhappy.  At  least  this  is  the  way  it 
looks  from  the  ridge-pole  of  the  world. 


VI 

IRomance  of  Science 


Science  is  generally  accredited  with  being 
very  matter-of-fact.  But  there  has  always  been 
one  romance  in  science  from  the  first,  —  its  ro- 
mantic attitude  toward  itself.  It  would  be  hard 
to  find  any  greater  romance  in  modern  times. 


ZTbe  TRomance  ot  Science 


265 


The  romance  of  science  is  the  assumption  that 
man  is  a  plain,  pure-blooded,  non-inferring, 
mere-observing  being  and  that  in  proportion  as 
his  brain  is  educated  he  must  not  use  it.  "De- 
ductive reasoning  has  gone  out  with  the  nine- 
teenth century,"  says  The  Strident  Voice. 
This  is  the  one  single  inference  that  the  scien- 
tific method  seems  to  have  been  able  to  make 
— the  inference  that  no  inference  has  a  right 
to  exist. 

So  far  as  I  can  see,  if  there  are  going  to  be 
inferences  anyway,  and  one  has  to  take  one's 
choice  in  inferring,  I  would  rather  have  a  few 
inferences  on  hand  that  I  can  live  with  every 
day  than  to  have  this  one  huge,  voracious  in- 
ference (the  scientist's)  which  swallows  all  the 
others  up.  For  that  matter,  when  the  scientist 
has  actually  made  it, — this  one  huge  guess  that 
he  has  n't  a  right  to  guess, — what  good  does  it 
do  him  ?  He  never  lives  up  to  it,  and  all  the 
time  he  has  his  poor,  miserable  theory  hanging 
about  him,  dogging  him  day  and  night.  Does 
he  not  keep  on  guessing  in  spite  of  himself? 
Does  he  not  live  plumped  up  against  mystery 
every  hour  of  his  life,  crowded  on  by  ignor- 
ance, forced  to  guess  if  only  to  eat?  Is  he  not 
browbeaten  into  taking  things  for  granted 
whichever  way  he  turns  ?  He  becomes  a  dole- 
ful, sceptical,  contradictory,  anxious,  disagree- 
able, disapproving  person  as  a  matter  of  course. 

One  would  think,  in  the  abstract,  that  a  cer- 
tain serenity  would  go  with  exact  knowledge; 


Cbc 
•(Romance 
of  Science 


266 


3Lost  Hrt  of  TReaMng 


Ube 

IRomance 
of  Science 


and  it  would,  if  a  man  were  willing  to  put  up 
with  a  reasonable  amount  of  exact  knowledge, 
eke  it  out  with  his  brains,  some  of  it;  but  when 
he  wants  all  the  exact  knowledge  there  is,  and 
nothing  else  but  exact  knowledge,  and  is  not 
willing  to  mix  his  brains  with  it,  it  is  different. 
When  a  man  puts  his  whole  being  into  a  vise 
of  exact  knowledge,  he  finds  that  he  has  about 
as  perfect  a  convenience  for  being  miserable 
as  could  possibly  be  devised.  He  soon  becomes 
incapable  of  noticing  things  or  of  enjoying 
things  in  the  world  for  themselves.  With  one  or 
two  exceptions,  I  have  never  known  a  scientist 
to  whom  his  knowing  a  thing,  or  not  knowing 
it,  did  not  seem  the  only  important  thing  about  it. 
Of  course  when  a  man's  mind  gets  into  this 
dolefully  cramped,  exact  condition,  a  universe 
like  this  is  not  what  it  ought  to  be  for  him.  He 
lives  too  unprotected  a  life.  His  whole  attitude 
toward  the  universe  becomes  one  of  wishing 
things  would  keep  off  of  him  in  it — things  he 
does  not  know.  Are  there  not  enough  things 
he  does  not  know  even  in  his  specialty  ?  And 
as  for  this  eternal  being  reminded  of  the  others, 
this  slovenly  habit  of  "  general  information  " 
that  interesting  people  have — this  guessing,  in- 
ferring, and  generalising — what  is  it  all  for  ? 
What  does  it  all  come  to  ?  If  a  man  is  after 
knowledge,  let  him  have  knowledge,  know- 
ledge that  is  knowledge,  let  him  find  a  fact, 
anything  for  a  fact,  get  God  into  a  corner,  hug 
one  fact  and  live  with  it  and  die  with  it. 


267 


When  a  man  once  gets  into  this  shut-in  at- 
titude it  is  of  little  use  to  put  a  word  in,  with 
him,  for  the  daily  habit  of  taking  the  roof  off 
one's  mind,  letting  the  universe  play  upon  it 
instead  of  trying  to  bore  a  hole  in  it  some- 
where. "  What  does  it  avail  after  all,  after  it 
is  all  over,  after  a  long  life,  even  if  the  hole  is 
bored,"  I  say  to  him,  "  to  stand  by  one's  little 
hole  and  cry,  '  Behold,  oh,  human  race,  this 
Gimlet  Hole  which  I  have  bored  in  infinite 
space!  Let  it  be  forever  named  for  me.'  ' 
And  in  the  meantime  the  poor  fellow  gets  no 
joy  out  of  living.  He  does  not  even  get  credit 
for  his  not-living,  seventy  years  of  it.  He 
fences  off  his  little  place  to  know  a  little  of  no- 
thing in,  becomes  a  specialist,  a  foot  note  to 
infinite  space,  and  is  never  noticed  afterwards 
(and  quite  reasonably)  by  any  one  —  not  even 
by  himself. 

VII 


I  am  not  saying  that  this  is  the  way  a  scien- 
tist —  a  mere  scientist,  one  who  has  the  fixed 
habit  of  not  reading  books  through  their  backs 
—  really  feels.  It  is  the  way  he  ought  to  feel. 
As  often  as  not  he  feels  quite  comfortable.  One 
sees  one  every  little  while  (the  mere  scientist) 
dropping  the  entire  universe  with  a  dull  thud 
and  looking  happy  after  it. 

But  the  best  ones  are  different.     Even  those 


268 


Xost  Hrt  of 


who  are  not  quite  the  best  are  different.  It  is 
really  a  very  rare  scientist  who  joggles  content- 
edly down  without  qualms,  or  without  delays, 
to  a  hole  in  space.  There  is  always  a  capabil- 
ity, an  apparently  left-over  capability  in  him. 
What  seems  to  happen  is,  that  when  the  aver- 
age human  being  makes  up  his  mind  to  it,  in- 
sists on  being  a  scientist,  the  I^ord  keeps  a 
remnant  of  happiness  in  him — a  gnawing  on 
the  inside  of  him  which  will  not  let  him  rest. 

This  remnant  of  happiness  in  him,  his  soul, 
or  inferring  organ,  or  whatever  it  may  be, 
makes  him  suspect  that  the  scientific  method 
as  a  complete  method  is  a  false,  superficial, 
and  dangerous  method,  threatening  the  very 
existence  of  all  knowledge  that  is  worth  know- 
ing on  the  earth.  He  begins  to  suspect  that 
a  mere  scientist,  a  man  who  cannot  even  make 
his  mind  work  both  ways,  backwards  or  for- 
wards, as  he  likes  (the  simplest,  most  rudi- 
mentary motion  of  a  mind),  inductively  or 
deductively,  is  bound  to  have  something  left 
out  of  all  of  his  knowledge.  He  sees  that  the 
all-or-nothing  assumption  in  knowledge,  to  say 
nothing  of  not  applying  to  the  arts,  in  which  it 
is  always  sterile,  does  not  even  apply  to  the 
physical  sciences— to  the  mist,  dust,  fire,  and 
water  out  of  which  the  earth  and  the  scientist 
are  made. 

For  men  who  are  living  their  lives  as  we  are 
living  ours,  in  the  shimmer  of  a  globule  in 
space,  it  is  not  enough  that  we  should  lift  our 


/iDonafcs  269 

faces  to  the  sky  and  blunder  and  guess  at  a 
God  there,  because  there  is  so  much  room  be- 
tween the  stars,  and  murmur  faintly,  "Spiritual 
things  are  spiritually  discerned."  By  the  in- 
finite bones  of  our  bodies,  by  the  seeds  of  the 
million  years  that  flow  in  our  veins,  material 
things  are  spiritually  discerned.  There  is  not 
science  enough  nor  scientific  method  enough  in 
the  schools  of  all  Christendom  for  a  man  to 
listen  intelligently  to  his  own  breathing  with, 
or  to  know  his  own  thumb-nail.  Is  not  his  own 
heart  thundering  the  infinite  through  him — 
beating  the  eternal  against  his  sides — even 
while  he  speaks?  And  does  he  not  know  it 
while  he  speaks  ? 

By  the  time  a  man  's  a  Junior  or  a  Senior 
nowadays,  if  he  feels  the  eternal  beating 
against  his  sides  he  thinks  it  must  be  some- 
thing else.  He  thinks  he  ought  to.  It  is  a 
mere  inference.  At  all  events  he  has  little 
use  for  it  unless  he  knows  just  how  eternal 
it  is.  I  am  speaking  too  strongly  ?  I  suppose 
I  am.  I  am  thinking  of  my  four  special 
boys — boys  I  have  been  doing  my  living  in, 
the  last  few  years.  I  cannot  help  speaking  a 
little  strongly.  Two  of  them — two  as  fine, 
flash-minded,  deep-lit,  wide-hearted  fellows  as 

one  would  like  to  see,  are  down  at  W ,  being 

cured  of  inferring  in  a  four  years'  course  at 

the  W Scientific  School.     Another  one, 

who  always  seemed  to  me  to  have  real 
genius  in  him,  who  might  have  had  a  period  in 


270 


%ost  Hrt  of  1ReaMn0 


literature  named  after  him,  almost,  if  he  'd 
stop  studying  literature,  is  taking  a  graduate 

course  at  M ,  learning  that  it  cannot  be 

proved  that  Shakespeare  wrote  Shakespeare. 
He  has  already  become  one  of  these  spot- 
lessly accurate  persons  one  expects  nowadays. 
(I  hardly  dare  to  hope  he  will  even  read  this 
book  of  mine,  with  all  his  affection  for  me, 
after  the  first  few  pages  or  so,  lest  he  should 
fall  into  a  low  or  wondering  state  of  mind.) 
My  fourth  boy,  who  was  the  most  promising 
of  all,  whose  mind  reached  out  the  farthest, 
who  was  always  touching  new  possibilities, 
a  fresh,  warm-blooded,  bright-eyed  fellow,  is 
down  under  a  manhole  studying  God  in  the 
N Theological  Seminary. 

This  may  not  be  exactly  a  literal  statement, 
nor  a  very  scientific  way  to  criticise  the  scien- 
tific method,  but  when  one  has  had  to  sit 
and  see  four  of  the  finest  minds  he  ever  knew 
snuffed  out  by  it, — whatever  else  may  be  said 
for  science,  scientific  language  is  not  satisfying. 
What  is  going  to  happen  to  us  next,  in  our 
little  town,  I  hardly  dare  to  know.  I  only 
k*now  that  three  relentlessly  inductive,  dull, 

brittle,  blasS,  and  springless  youths  from  S 

University  have  just  come  down  and  taken 
possession  of  our  High  School.  They  seem  to 
be  throwing,  as  near  as  I  can  judge,  a  spell 
of  the  impossibility  of  knowledge  over  the  boys 
we  have  left. 

I  admit  that  I  am  in  an  unreasonable  state  of 


271 


mind.*  I  think  a  great  many  people  are.  At 
least  I  hope  so.  There  is  no  excuse  for  not  be- 
ing a  little  unreasonable.  Sometimes  it  almost 
seems,  when  one  looks  at  the  condition  of 
most  college  boys'  minds,  as  if  our  colleges 
were  becoming  the  moral  and  spiritual  and  in- 
tellectual dead-centres  of  modern  life. 

I  will  not  yield  to  any  man  in  admiration 
for  Science  —  holy  and  speechless  Science; 
holier  than  any  religion  has  ever  been  yet; 
what  religions  are  made  of  and  are  going  to  be 
made  of,  nor  am  I  dating  my  mind  three 
hundred  years  back  and  trying  to  pick  a 
quarrel  with  Lord  Bacon.  I  am  merely  won- 
dering whether,  if  science  is  to  be  taught  at 
all,  it  had  not  better  be  taught,  in  each  branch 
of  it,  by  men  who  are  teaching  a  subject  they 
have  conceived  with  their  minds  instead  of  a 
subject  which  has  been  merely  unloaded  on 
them,  piled  up  on  top  of  their  minds,  and  which 
their  minds  do  not  know  anything  about. 

No  one  seems  to  have  stopped  to  notice  what 
the  spectacle  of  science  as  taught  in  college  is 
getting  to  be  —  the  spectacle  of  one  set  of 
minds  which  has  been  crunched  by  knowledge 
crunching  another  set.  Have  you  never  been 
to  One,  oh  Gentle  Reader,  and  watched  It, 
watched  It  when  It  was  working,  one  of  these 
great  Endowed  Fact-machines,  wound  up  by 
the  dead,  going  round  and  round,  thousands 
and  thousands  of  youths  in  it  being  rolled  out 

*  Fact. 


flDonat-8 


272 


%ost  Hrt  of  TReaoina 


and  chilled  through  and  educated  in  it,  having 
their  souls  smoothed  out  of  them  ?  Hundreds 
of  human  minds,  small  and  sure  and  hard, 
working  away  on  thousands  of  other  human 
minds,  making  them  small  and  sure  and  hard. 
Matter — infinite  matter  everywhere — taught 
by  More  Matter,  —  taught  the  way  Matter 
would  teach  if  it  knew  how — without  generalis- 
ing, without  putting  facts  together  to  make 
truths  out  of  them. 

It  would  seem,  looking  at  it  theoretically, 
that  Science,  of  all  things  in  this  world,  the  stuff 
that  dreams  are  made  of;  the  one  boundless 
subject  of  the  earth,  face  to  face  and  breath  to 
breath  with  the  Creator  every  minute  of  its  life, 
would  be  taught  with  a  divine  touch  in  it,  with 
the  appeal  to  the  imagination  and  the  soul,  to 
the  world-building  instinct  in  a  man,  the  thing 
in  him  that  puts  universes  together,  the  thing 
in  him  that  fills  the  whole  dome  of  space  and  all 
the  crevices  of  being  with  the  whisper  of  God. 

But  it  is  not  so.  Science  is  great,  and  great 
scientists  are  great  as  a  matter  of  course ;  but 
the  sciences  in  the  meantime  are  being  taught 
in  our  colleges — in  many  of  them,  most  of 
them — by  men  whose  minds  are  mere  register- 
ing machines.  The  facts  are  put  in  at  one  end 
(one  click  per  fact)  and  come  out  facts  at  the 
other.  The  sciences  are  being  taught  more 
and  more  every  year  by  moral  and  spiritual 
stutterers,  men  with  non-inferring  minds,  men 
who  live  in  a  perfect  deadlock  of  knowledge, 


273 


men  who  cannot  generalise  about  a  fly's  wing, 
bashful,  empty,  limp,  and  hopeless  and  dod- 
dering before  the  commonplacest,  sanest,  and 
simplest  generalisations  of  human  life.  In  The 
Great  Free  Show,  in  our  common  human  peep 
at  it,  who  has  not  seen  them,  staggering  to 
know  what  the  very  children,  playing  with 
dolls  and  rocking-horses,  can  take  for  granted  ? 
Minds  which  seem  absolutely  incapable  of 
striking  out,  of  taking  a  good,  manly  stride  on 
anything,  mincing  in  religion,  effeminate  in 
enthusiasm — please  forgive  me,  Gentle  Reader, 
I  know  I  ought  not  to  carry  on  in  this  fash- 
ion, but  have  I  not  spent  years  in  my  soul 
(sometimes  it  seems  hundreds  of  years)  in 
being  humble  —  in  being  abject  before  this 
kind  of  mind  ?  It  is  only  a  day  almost  since 
I  have  found  it  out,  broken  away  from  it,  got 
hold  of  the  sky  to  hoot  at  it  with.  I  am  free 
now.  I  am  not  going  to  be  humble  longer,  be- 
fore it.  I  have  spent  years  dully  wondering  be- 
fore this  mind;  wondering  what  was  the  matter 
with  me  that  I  could  not  love  it,  that  I  could 
not  go  where  it  loved  to  go,  and  come  when 
it  said  "  Come  "  to  me.  I  have  spent  years  in 
dust  and  ashes  before  it,  struggling  with  my- 
self, trying  to  make  myself  small  enough  to  fol- 
low this  kind  of  a  mind  around,  and  now  the 
scales  are  fallen  from  my  eyes.  When  I  follow 
An  Inductive  Scientific  Mind  now,  or  try  to 
follow  it  through  its  convolutions  of  matter- 
of-fact,  its  involutions  of  logic,  its  wriggling 


274 


Xost  art  of  IReaoina 


through  axioms,  I  smile  a  new  smile  and  my 
heart  laughs  within  me.  If  I  miss  the  point, 
I  am  not  in  a  panic,  and  if,  at  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  platitude  that  did  not  need  to  be 
proved,  I  find  I  do  not  know  where  I  am,  I 
thank  God. 

I  know  that  I  am  partly  unreasonable,  and 
I  know  that  in  my  chosen  station  on  the 
ridge-pole  of  the  world  it  is  useless  to  criticise 
those  who  do  not  even  believe,  probably,  that 
worlds  have  ridge-poles.  It  is  a  bit  hard  to 
get  their  attention — and  I  hope  the  reader  will 
overlook  it  if  one  seems  to  speak  rather  loud — 
from  ridge-poles.  Oh,  ye  children  of  The  lit- 
eral !  ye  most  serene  Highnesses,  ye  archangels 
of  Accuracy,  the  Voices  of  life  all  challenge 
you — the  world  around!  What  are  ye,  after 
all,  but  pilers-up  of  matter,  truth-stutterers, 
truth-spellers,  sunk  in  protoplasm  to  the  tops 
of  your  souls  ?  What  is  it  that  you  are  going 
to  do  with  us?  How  many  generations  of 
youths  do  you  want  ?  When  will  souls  be  al- 
lowed again  ?  When  will  they  be  allowed  in 
college  ? 

Well,  well,  I  say  to  my  soul,  what  does  it  all 
come  to  ?  Why  all  this  ado  about  it  one  way  or 
the  other?  Is  it  not  a  great,  fresh,  eager, 
boundless  world  ?  Does  it  not  roll  up  out  of 
Darkness  with  new  children  on  it,  night  after 
night  ?  What  does  it  matter,  I  say  to  my  soul — 
a  generation  or  so — from  the  ridge-pole  of  the 
world  ?  The  great  Sun  comes  round  again.  It 


275 


travels  over  the  tops  of  seas  and  mountains. 
Microbes  in  their  dewdrops,  seeds  in  their 
winds,  stars  in  their  courses,  worms  in  their 
apples,  answer  it,  and  the  hordes  of  the  ants 
in  their  ant-hills  run  before  it.  And  what  does 
it  matter  after  all,  under  the  great  Dome,  a 
few  hordes  of  factmongers  more  or  less,  glim- 
mering and  wonderless,  crawlers  on  the  bottom 
of  the  sea  of  time,  lovers  of  the  ooze  of  know- 
ledge, feeling  with  slow,  myopic  mouths  at 
Infinite  Truth  ? 

But  when  I  see  my  four  faces — the  faces  of 
my  four  special  boys,  when  I  hear  the  college 
bells  ringing  to  them,  it  matters  a  great  deal. 
My  soul  will  not  wait.  What  is  the  ridge- 
pole of  the  world  ?  The  distance  of  a  ridge- 
pole does  not  count.  The  extent  of  a  universe 
does  not  seem  to  make  very  much  difference. 
The  next  ten  generations  do  not  help  very 
much  on  this  one.  I  go  forth  in  my  soul.  I 
take  hold  of  the  first  scientist  I  meet — my 
whole  mind  pummelling  him.  ' '  What  is  it  ?  " 
I  say,  "  what  is  it  you  are  doing  with  us  and 
with  the  lives  of  our  children  ?  What  is  it 
you  are  doing  with  yourself  ?  Truth  is  not  a 
Thing.  Did  you  think  it  ?  Truth  is  not  even 
a  Heap  of  Things.  It  is  a  Light.  How  dare 
you  mock  at  inferring?  How  dare  you  to 
think  to  escape  the  infinite?  You  cannot 
escape  the  infinite  even  by  making  yourself 
small  enough.  It  is  written  that  thou  shalt  be 
infinitely  small  if  thou  art  not  infinitely  large. 


276 


%ost  Hrt  of 


Not  to  infer  is  to  contradict  the  very  nature  of 
facts.  Not  to  infer  is  not  to  live.  It  is  to  cease 
to  be  a  fact  one's  self.  What  is  education  if 
one  does  not  infer  ?  Vacuums  rolling  around 
in  vacuums.  Atoms  cross-examining  atoms. 
And  you  say  you  will  not  guess  ?  Do  you  need 
to  be  cudgelled  with  a  whole  universe  to  begin 
to  learn  to  guess  ?  What  is  all  your  science — 
your  boasted  science,  after  all,  but  more  raw 
material  to  make  more  guesses  with  ?  Is  not 
the  whole  Future  Tense  an  inference  ?  Is  not 
History — that  which  has  actually  happened — a 
mystery  ?  You  yourself  are  a  mere  probability, 
and  God  is  a  generalisation.  What  does  it 
profit  a  man  to  discover  The  Inductive  Method 
and  to  lose  his  own  soul  ?  What  is  The  In- 
ductive Method  ?  Do  you  think  that  all  these 
scientists  who  have  locked  their  souls  up  and  a 
large  part  of  their  bodies,  in  The  Inductive 
Method,  if  they  had  waited  to  be  born  by  The 
Inductive  Method,  would  ever  have  heard  of 
it  ?  Being  born  is  one  inference  and  dying  is 
another.  Man  leaves  a  wake  of  infinity  after 
him  wherever  he  goes,  and  of  course  it 's  where 
he  does  n't  go.  It 's  all  infinity — one  way  or 
the  other." 

And  it  came  to  pass  in  my  dream  as  I  lay  on 
my  bed  in  the  night,  I  thought  I  saw  Man  my 
brother  blinking  under  the  dome  of  space,  in- 
finite monad  that  he  is:  I  saw  him  with  a  glass 
in  one  hand  and  a  Slide  of  Infinity  in  the  other, 


flDultiplicatfon  tables 


277 


and,  in  my  dream,  out  of  His  high  heaven  God 
leaned  down  to  me  and  said  to  me,  ' '  What  is 
THAT?" 

And  as  I  looked  I  laughed  and  prayed  in  my 
heart,  I  scarce  knew  which,  and  "Oh,  Most 
Excellent  Deity!  Who  would  think  it!"  I 
cried.  "  I  do  not  know,  but  I  think — I  think — 
it  is  a  man,  thinking  he  is  studying  a  GERM— 
one  tiny  particle  of  inimitable  Immensity  og- 
ling another! " 

And  a  very  pretty  sight  it  is,  too,  oh  Brother 
Monads — if  we  do  not  take  it  seriously. 

And  what  we  really  need  next,  oh  comrades, 
scientists — each  under  our  separate  stones — is 
the  Laugh  Out  of  Heaven  which  shall  come 
down  and  save  us — laugh  the  roofs  of  our 
stones  off.  Then  we  shall  stretch  our  souls 
with  inferences.  We  shall  lie  in  the  great  sun 
and  warm  ourselves. 

VIII 

fEmltipUcation  Gables 

It  would  seem  to  be  the  main  trouble  with 
the  scientific  mind  of  the  second  rank  that  it 
overlooks  the  nature  of  knowledge  in  the  thirst 
for  exact  knowledge.  In  an  infinite  world  the 
better  part  of  the  knowledge  a  man  needs  to 
have  does  not  need  to  be  exact. 

These  things  being  as  they  are,  it  would  seem 
that  the  art  of  reading  books  through  their 


fl>Ultipti« 

cation 
tables 


278 


%ost  Hrt  of 


cation 
Cables 


backs  is  an  equally  necessary  art  to  a  great 
scientist  and  to  a  great  poet.  If  it  is  necessary 
to  great  scientists  and  to  great  poets  it  is  all  the 
more  necessary  to  small  ones,  and  to  the  rest  of 
us.  It  is  the  only  way,  indeed,  in  which  an  im- 
mortal human  being  of  any  kind  can  get  what 
he  deserves  to  have  to  live  his  life  with — a 
whole  cross-section  of  the  universe.  A  gentle- 
man and  a  scholar  will  take  nothing  less. 

If  a  man  is  to  get  his  cross-section  of  the  uni- 
verse, his  natural  share  in  it,  he  can  only  get  it 
by  living  in  the  qualities  of  things  instead  of 
the  quantities  ;  by  avoiding  duplicate  facts, 
duplicate  persons,  and  principles  ;  by  using  the 
multiplication  table  in  knowledge  (inference) 
instead  of  adding  everything  up,  by  taking  all 
things  in  this  world  (except  his  specialty) 
through  their  spirits  and  essences,  and,  in  gen- 
eral, by  reading  books  through  their  backs. 

The  problem  of  cultivating  these  powers  in 
a  man,  when  reduced  to  its  simplest  terms,  is 
reduced  to  the  problem  of  cultivating  his  im- 
agination or  organ  of  not  needing  to  be  told 
things. 

However  much  a  man  may  know  about  wise 
reading  and  about  the  principles  of  economy  in 
knowledge,  in  an  infinite  world  the  measure  of 
his  knowledge  is  bound  to  be  determined,  in 
the  long  run,  by  the  capacity  of  his  organ  of 
not  needing  to  be  told  things  —  of  reading 
books  through  their  backs. 


279 


II — On  Reading  for 
Principles 

i 

®n  Changing  ®ne'a  Conscience 

WE  were  sitting  by  my  fireplace— several  ©nCbanfl«, 
of  our  club.  I  had  just  been  reading  ingone's 
out  loud  a  little  thing  of  my  own.  I  have  for-  Con8Clencc 
gotten  the  title.  It  was  something  about  Books 
that  Other  People  ought  to  Read,  I  think. 
I  stopped  rather  suddenly,  rather  more  sud- 
denly than  anybody  had  hoped.  At  least  no- 
body had  thought  what  he  ought  to  say  about 
it.  And  I  saw  that  the  company,  after  a  sort 
of  general,  vague  air  of  having  exclaimed  pro- 
perly, was  settling  back  into  the  usual  helpless 
silence  one  expects — after  the  appearance  of  an 
idea  at  clubs. 

"  Why  does  n't  somebody  say  something  ?  " 
I  said. 


280 


OLost  Brt  of  IReaoina 


CnCbangs 

ing  One's 

Conscience 


P.  G.  S.  of  M.:  "  We  are  thinking." 

"  Oh,"  I  said.  I  tried  to  feel  grateful.  But 
everybody  kept  waiting. 

I  was  a  good  deal  embarrassed  and  was  get- 
ting reckless  and  was  about  to  make  the  very 
serious  mistake,  in  a  club,  of  seeing  if  I  could 
not  rescue  one  idea  by  going  out  after  it  with 
another,  when  The  Mysterious  Person  (who  is 
the  only  man  in  our  club  whose  mind  ever 
really  comes  over  and  plays  in  my  yard)  in  the 
goodness  of  his  heart  spoke  up.  ' '  I  have  not 
heard  anything  in  a  long  time,"  he  began  (the 
club  looked  at  him  rather  anxiously),  "  which 
has  done  —  which  has  made  me  feel  —  less 
ashamed  of  myself  than  this  paper.  I ' ' 

It  seemed  to  me  that  this  was  not  exactly  a 
fortunate  remark.  I  said  I  did  n't  doubt  I 
could  do  a  lot  of  good  that  way,  probably,  if  I 
wanted  to — going  around  the  country  making 
people  less  ashamed  of  themselves. 

"  But  I  don't  mean  that  I  feel  really  ashamed 
of  myself  about  books  I  have  not  read, ' '  said 
The  Mysterious  Person.  ' '  What  I  mean  is, 
that  I  have  a  kind  of  slinking  feeling  that  I 
ought  to — a  feeling  of  being  ashamed  for  not 
being  ashamed." 

I  told  The  M.  P.  that  I  thought  New  Eng- 
land was  full  of  people  just  like  him — people 
with  a  lot  of  left-over  consciences. 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  wanted  to  know  what  I 
meant  by  that. 

I  said  I  thought  there  were  thousands  of 


Gbanaing  ©ne's  Conscience 


281 


people — one  sees  them  everywhere  in  Massa- 
chusetts —  fairly  intelligent  people,  people 
who  are  capable  of  changing  their  minds 
about  things,  but  who  can't  change  their 
consciences.  Their  consciences  seem  to  keep 
hanging  on  to  them,  in  the  same  set  way — 
somehow  —  with  or  without  their  minds. 
"  Some  people's  consciences  don't  seem  to  no- 
tice much,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  whether  they 
have  minds  connected  with  them  or  not." 
"  Don't  you  know  what  it  is,"  I  appealed  to 
the  P.  G.  S.  of  M.,  "  to  get  everything  all  fixed 
up  with  your  mind  and  your  reason  and  your 
soul  ;  that  certain  things  that  look  wrong  are 
all  right, — the  very  things  of  all  others  that  you 
ought  to  do  and  keep  on  doing, — and  then  have 
your  conscience  keep  right  on  the  same  as  it 
always  did — tatting  them  up  against  you  ?  " 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  said  something  about  not 
spending  very  much  time  thinking  about  his 
conscience. 

I  said  I  did  n't  believe  in  it,  but  I  thought 
that  if  a  man  had  one,  it  was  apt  to  trouble  him 
a  little  off  and  on — especially  if  the  one  he  had 
was  one  of  these  left-over  ones.  "  If  you  had 
one  of  these  consciences — I  mean  the  kind  of 
conscience  that  pretends  to  belong  to  you,  and 
acts  as  if  it  belonged  to  some  one  else, ' '  I  said 
— "one  of  these  dead-frog-leg,  reflex-action 
consciences,  working  and  twitching  away  on 
you  day  and  night,  the  way  I  have,  you  'd 
have  to  think  about  it  sometimes.  You  'd  get 


On  Cbancjs 
fn<j  One's 
Conscience 


282 


OLost  Hrt  of  1Reaoin0 


On  tbe  tna 
tolerance 


pcvienccS 
people 


so  ashamed  of  it.  You  'd  feel  trifled  with  so. 
You  'd " 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  said  something  about  not 
being  very  much  surprised — over  my  case.  He 
said  that  people  who  changed  their  minds  as 
often  as  I  did  could  n't  reasonably  expect  con- 
sciences spry  enough. 

His  general  theory  seemed  to  be  that  I  had 
a  conscience  once  and  wore  it  out. 

"  It 's  getting  to  be  so  with  everybody  nowa- 
days," he  said.  "  Nobody  is  settled.  Ev- 
erything is  blown  about.  We  do  not  respect 
tradition  either  in  ourselves  or  in  the  life  about 
us.  No  one  listens  to  the  Voice  of  Experi- 
ence." 

"  There  she  blows!  "  I  said.  I  knew  it  was 
coming  sooner  or  later.  I  added  that  one  of 
the  great  inconveniences  of  life,  it  seemed  to 
me,  was  the  Intolerance  of  Experienced  People. 

II 

<S>n  tbe  "[Intolerance  of  Experience!) 
people 

It  is  generally  assumed  by  persons  who  have 
taken  the  pains  to  put  themselves  in  this  very 
disagreeable  class,  that  people  in  general — all 
other  people  —  are  as  inexperienced  as  they 
look.  If  a  man  speaks  on  a  subject  at  all  in 
their  presence,  they  assume  he  speaks  autobio- 
graphically.  These  people  are  getting  thicker 


Intolerance  of  Ejpertenceo  people 


283 


every  year.  One  can't  go  anywhere  without 
finding  them  standing  around  with  a  kind  of 
"  How-do-you-know  ?  "  and  "  Did-it-happen- 
to-you  ?  "  air  every  time  a  man  says  something 
he  knows  by — well — by  seeing  it — perfectly 
plain  seeing  it.  One  does  n't  need  to  stand  up 
to  one's  neck  in  experience,  in  a  perfect  muck 
of  experience,  in  order  to  know  things,  in  order 
to  know  they  are  there.  People  who  are  experi- 
enced within  an  inch  of  their  lives,  submerged 
in  experience,  until  all  you  can  see  of  them  is 
a  tired  look,  are  always  calling  out  to  the  man 
who  sees  a  thing  as  he  is  going  by — sees  it,  I 
mean,  with  his  mind;  sees  it  without  having 
to  put  his  feet  in  it — they  are  always  calling 
out  to  him  to  come  back  and  be  with  them,  and 
know  life,  as  they  call  it,  and  duck  under  to 
Experience.  Now,  to  say  nothing  of  living 
with  such  persons,  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
talk  with  them.  It  is  n't  safe  even  to  philo- 
sophise when  they  are  around.  If  a  man  vent- 
ures the  assertion  in  their  presence  that  what 
a  woman  loves  in  a  lover  is  complete  subjuga- 
tion they  argue  that  either  he  is  a  fool  and  is 
asserting  what  he  has  not  experienced,  or  he  is 
still  more  of  one  and  has  experienced  it.  The 
idea  that  a  man  may  have  several  principles 
around  him  that  he  has  not  used  yet  does  not 
occur  to  them.  The  average  amateur  mother, 
when  she  belongs  to  this  type,  becomes  a  per- 
fect bigot  toward  a  maiden  aunt  who  advances, 
perhaps,  some  harmless  little  Froebel  idea.  She 


On  the  U  n= 
tolerance 

of  Er- 

pcrienceo 

people 


284 


Xost  Brt  of 


On  tbe  In* 
tolerance 

Of  Jsfs 

perfenccB 
people 


swears  by  the  shibboleth  of  experience,  and 
every  new  baby  she  has  makes  her  more  disa- 
greeable to  people  who  have  not  had  babies. 
The  only  way  to  get  acquainted  with  her  is  to 
have  a  baby.  She  assumes  that  a  motherless 
woman  has  a  motherless  mind.  The  idea  that 
a  rich  and  bountiful  womanhood,  which  is  sav- 
ing its  motherhood  up,  which  is  free  from  the 
absorption  and  the  haste,  keenly  observant  and 
sympathetic,  may  come  to  a  kind  of  motherly 
insight,  distinctly  the  result  of  not  being  ex- 
perienced, does  not  occur  to  her.  The  art  of 
getting  the  result — the  spirit  of  experience, 
without  paying  all  the  cost  of  the  experience 
itself — needs  a  good  word  spoken  for  it  nowa- 
days. Some  one  has  yet  to  point  out  the  value 
and  power  of  what  might  be  called  The  Maiden- 
Aunt  Attitude  toward  lyife.  The  world  has 
had  thousands  of  experienced  young  mothers 
for  thousands  of  years — experienced  out  of 
their  wits — piled  up  with  experiences  they 
don't  know  anything  about;  but,  in  the  mean- 
time, the  most  important  contribution  to  the 
bringing-up  of  children  in  the  world  that  has 
ever  been  known  —  the  kindergarten  —  was 
thought  of  in  the  first  place  by  a  man  who  was 
never  a  mother,  and  has  been  developed  en- 
tirely in  the  years  that  have  followed  since  by 
maiden  aunts. 

The  spiritual  power  and  manifoldness  and 
largeness  which  is  the  most  informing  quality 
of  a  really  cultivated  man  comes  from  a  certain 


©n  1foax>ln0  ©ne's  Experience  2>one  ©ut 


285 


refinement  in  him,  a  gift  of  knowing  by  tast- 
ing. He  seems  to  have  touched  the  spirits  of 
a  thousand  experiences  we  know  he  never  has 
had,  and  they  seem  to  have  left  the  souls  of 
sorrows  and  joys  in  him.  He  lives  in  a  kind 
of  beautiful  magnetic  fellowship  with  all  real 
life  in  the  world.  This  is  only  possible  by  a 
sort  of  unconscious  economy  in  the  man's  na- 
ture, a  gift  of  not  having  to  experience  things. 
Avoiding  experience  is  one  of  the  great  cre- 
ative arts  of  life.  We  shall  have  enough  before 
we  die.  It  is  forced  upon  us.  We  cannot  even 
select  it,  most  of  it.  But,  in  so  far  as  we  can 
select  it, — in  one's  reading,  for  instance, — it 
behooves  a  man  to  avoid  experience.  He  at 
least  wants  to  avoid  experience  enough  to  have 
time  to  stop  and  think  about  the  experience  he 
has;  to  be  sure  he  is  getting  as  much  out  of  his 
experience  as  it  is  worth. 

Ill 

Qr\  Ibaving  ©ne's  Experience  Done 
Gut 

' '  But  how  can  one  avoid  an  experience  ?  ' ' 
By  heading  it  off  with  a  principle.     Princi- 
ples are  a  lot  of  other  people's  experiences,  in 
a  convenient  form  a  man  can  carry  around  with 
him,  to  keep  off  his  own  experiences  with. 

No  other  rule  for  economising  knowledge 
can  quite  take  the  place,  it  seems  to  me,  of 


One's  Ej-= 
pcrience 
Bone  Out 


286 


Xost  art  of  IReabing 


©it  fjaving 
©ne'a  E|r« 
perience 
Bone  Out 


reading  for  principles.  It  economises  for  a 
man  both  ways  at  once.  It  not  only  makes  it 
possible  for  a  man  to  have  the  whole  human 
race  working  out  his  life  for  him,  instead  of 
having  to  do  it  all  himself,  but  it  makes  it  pos- 
sible for  him  to  read  anything  he  likes,  to  get 
something  out  of  almost  anything  he  does  not 
like,  which  he  is  obliged  to  read.  If  a  man  has 
a  habit  of  reading  for  principles,  for  the  law 
behind  everything,  he  cannot  miss  it.  He 
cannot  help  learning  things,  even  from  people 
who  don't  know  them. 

The  other  evening  when  The  P.  G.  S.  of  M. 
came  into  my  study,  he  saw  the  morning  paper 
lying  unopened  on  the  settle  by  the  fireplace. 

"  Have  n't  you  read  this  yet  ?  "  he  said. 

"  No,  not  to-day." 

"  Where  are  you,  anyway  ?     Why  not  ?  " 

I  said  I  had  n't  felt  up  to  it  yet,  did  n't  feel 
profound  enough — something  to  that  effect. 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  thinks  a  newspaper 
should  be  read  in  ten  minutes.  He  looked  over 
at  me  with  a  sort  of  slow,  pitying,  Boston-Pub- 
lic-Library expression  he  has  sometimes. 

I  behaved  as  well  as  I  could — took  no  notice 
for  a  minute. 

"The  fact  is,  I  have  changed,"  I  said, 
' '  about  papers  and  some  things.  I  have  times 
of  thinking  I  'm  improved  considerably,"  I 
added  recklessly. 

Still  the  same  pained  Boston-Public-Library 
expression — only  turned  on  a  little  harder. 


©n  having  ©ne's  Experience  2>one  ©ut 


"  Seems  to  me,"  I  said,  "  when  a  man  can't 
feel  superior  to  other  people  in  this  world,  he 
might  at  least  be  allowed  the  privilege  of  feel- 
ing superior  to  himself  once  in  a  while — spells 
of  it. 

He  intimated  that  the  trouble  with  me  was 
that  I  wanted  both.  I  admitted  that  I  had 
cravings  for  both.  I  said  I  thought  I  'd  be  a 
little  easier  to  get  along  with,  if  they  were 
more  satisfied. 

He  intimated  that  I  was  easier  to  get  along 
with  than  I  ought  to  be,  or  than  I  seemed  to 
think  I  was.  He  did  not  put  it  in  so  many 
words.  The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  never  says  any- 
thing that  can  be  got  hold  of  and  answered. 
Finally  I  determined  to  answer  him  whether 
he  had  said  anything  or  not. 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "I  may  feel  superior  to 
other  people  sometimes.  I  may  even  feel  su- 
perior to  myself,  but  I  have  n't  got  to  the 
point  where  I  feel  superior  to  a  newspaper — to 
a  whole  world  at  once.  I  don't  try  to  read  it  in 
ten  minutes.  I  don't  try  to  make  a  whole  day 
of  a  whole  world,  a  foot-note  to  my  oatmeal 
mush!  I  don't  treat  the  whole  human  race, 
trooping  past  my  breakfast,  as  a  parenthesis  in 
my  own  mind.  I  don't  try  to  read  a  great, 
serious,  boundless  thing  like  a  daily  news- 
paper, unfolded  out  of  starlight,  gleaner  of  a 
thousand  sunsets  around  a  world,  and  talk  at 
the  same  time.  I  don't  say,  '  There  's  noth- 
ing in  it,'  interrupt  a  planet  to  chew  my  food, 


One's  E;a 
perfence 
H>one  Out 


288 


%ost  act  ot  IReafcing 


On  tjavfng 

One's  Er= 
pcricncc 
Done  Out 


throw  a  planet  on  the  floor  and  look  for  my 
hat.  .  .  .  Nations  lunging  through  space 
to  say  good-morning  to  me,  continents  flashed 
around  my  thoughts,  seas  for  the  boundaries  of 
my  day's  delight  .  .  .  the  great  God  shin- 
ing over  all !  And  may  He  preserve  me  from 
ever  reading  a  newspaper  in  ten  minutes!  " 

I  have  spent  as  much  time  as  any  one,  I 
think,  in  my  day,  first  and  last,  in  feeling  su- 
perior to  newspapers.  I  can  remember  when 
I  used  to  enjoy  it  very  much — the  feeling,  I 
mean.  I  have  spent  whole  half-days  at  it, 
going  up  and  down  columns,  thinking  they 
were  not  good  enough  for  me. 

Now  when  I  take  up  a  morning  paper,  half- 
dread,  half-delight,  I  take  it  up  softly.  My 
whole  being  trembles  in  the  balance  before  it. 
The  whole  procession  of  my  soul,  shabby,  love- 
less, provincial,  tawdry,  is  passed  in  review 
before  it.  It  is  the  grandstand  of  the  world. 
The  vast  and  awful  Roll-Call  of  the  things  I 
ought  to  be — the  things  I  ought  to  love — in  the 
great  world  voice  sweeps  over  me.  It  reaches 
its  way  through  all  my  thoughts,  through  the 
minutes  of  my  days.  "  Where  is  thy  soul? 
Oh,  where  is  thy  soul  ?  ' '  the  morning  paper, 
up  and  down  its  columns,  calls  to  me.  There 
are  days  that  I  ache  with  the  echo  of  it. 
There  are  days  when  I  dare  not  read  it  until 
the  night.  Then  the  voice  that  is  in  it  grows 
gentle  with  the  darkness,  it  may  be,  and  is 
stilled  with  sleep. 


©n  iReading  a  Newspaper  in  Uen  /BMnutes 


289 


IV 


I  am  not  saying  it  does  not  take  a  very  intel- 
ligent man  to  read  a  newspaper  in  ten  minutes 
— squeeze  a  planet  at  breakfast  and  drop  it.  I 
think  it  does.  But  I  am  inclined  to  think  that 
the  intelligent  man  who  reads  a  newspaper  in 
ten  minutes  is  exactly  the  same  kind  of  intelli- 
gent man  who  could  spend  a  week  reading  it 
if  he  wanted  to,  and  not  waste  a  minute.  And 
he  might  want  to.  He  simply  reads  a  news- 
paper as  he  likes.  He  is  not  confined  to  one 
way.  He  does  not  read  it  in  ten  minutes  be- 
cause he  has  a  mere  ten-minute  mind,  but  be- 
cause he  merely  has  the  ten  minutes.  Rapid 
reading  and  slow  reading  are  both  based,  with 
such  a  man,  on  appreciation  of  the  paper — and 
not  upon  a  narrow,  literary,  Boston-Public- 
I,ibrary  feeling  of  being  superior  to  it. 

The  value  of  reading-matter,  like  other  mat- 
ter, depends  on  what  a  man  does  with  it.  All 
that  one  needs  in  order  not  to  waste  time  in 
general  reading  is  a  large,  complete  set  of  prin- 
ciples to  stow  things  away  in.  Nothing  really 
needs  to  be  wasted.  If  one  knows  where  every- 
thing belongs  in  one's  mind — or  tries  to, — if 
one  takes  the  trouble  to  put  it  there,  reading  a 
newspaper  is  one  of  the  most  colossal,  tremen- 
dous, and  boundless  acts  that  can  be  performed 


On 


paper  in 

Ucn 
minutes 


290 


Xost  Hrt  of  TReafcing 


On 
•Reading  a 


paper  in 
TZcn 

/ttinutes 


by  any  one  in  the  whole  course  of  a  human 
life. 

If  there  's  any  place  where  a  man  needs  to 
have  all  his  wits  about  him,  to  put  things  into, 
— if  there  's  any  place  where  the  next  three 
inches  can  demand  as  much  of  a  man  as  a  news- 
paper, where  is  it  ?  The  moment  he  opens  it 
he  lays  his  soul  open  and  exposes  himself  to 
all  sides  of  the  world  in  a  second, — to  several 
thousand  years  of  a  world  at  once. 

A  book  is  a  comparatively  safe,  unintelligent 
place  for  a  mind  to  be  in.  There  are  at  least 
four  walls  to  it — a  few  scantlings  over  one,  pro- 
tecting one  from  all  space.  A  man  has  at  least 
some  remotest  idea  of  where  he  is,  of  what  may 
drop  on  him,  in  a  book.  It  may  tax  his  ca- 
pacity of  stowing  things  away.  But  he  always 
has  notice — almost  always.  It  sees  that  he  has 
time  and  room.  It  has  more  conveniences  for 
fixing  things.  The  author  is  always  there 
besides,  a  kind  of  valet  to  anybody,  to  help 
people  along  pleasantly,  to  anticipate  their 
wants.  It's  what  an  author  is  for.  One  ex- 
pects it. 

But  a  man  finds  it  is  different  in  a  morning 
paper,  rolled  out  of  dreams  and  sleep  into  it, — 
empty,  helpless  before  a  day,  all  the  telegraph 
machines  of  the  world  thumping  all  the  night, 
clicked  into  one's  thoughts  before  one  thinks 
— no  man  really  has  room  in  him  to  read  a 
morning  paper.  No  man's  soul  is  athletic  or 
swift  enough.  .  .  .  Nations  in  a  sentence. 


General  Unformation 


291 


.  .  .  Thousands  of  years  in  a  minute,  phi- 
losophies, religions,  legislatures,  paleozoics, 
church  socials,  side  by  side;  stars  and  gossip, 
fools,  heroes,  comets — infinity  on  parade,  and 
over  the  precipice  of  the  next  paragraph,  head- 
long— who  knows  what! 

Reading  a  morning  paper  is  one  of  the  su- 
preme acts  of  presence  of  mind  in  a  human  life. 


General 

flnfovma- 

tfon 


General  Unformatlon 

' '  But  what  is  going  to  become  of  us  ?  "  some 
one  says,  "  if  a  man  has  to  go  through  '  the 
supreme  act  of  presence  of  mind  in  a  whole 
human  life,'  every  morning — and  every  morn- 
ing before  he  goes  to  business  ?  It  takes  as 
much  presence  of  mind  as  most  men  have, 
mornings,  barely  to  get  up." 

Well,  of  course,  I  admit,  if  a  man  's  going 
to  read  a  newspaper  to  toe  the  line  of  all  his 
convictions;  if  he  insists  on  taking  the  news- 
paper as  a  kind  of  this-morning's  junction  of 
all  knowledge,  he  will  have  to  expect  to  be  a 
rather  anxious  person.  One  could  hardly  get 
one  paper  really  read  through  in  this  way  in 
one's  whole  life.  If  a  man  is  always  going 
to  read  the  news  of  the  globe  in  such  a  seri- 
ous, sensitive,  suggestive,  improving,  Atlas- 
like  fashion,  it  would  be  better  he  had  never 
learned  to  read  at  all.  At  all  events,  if  it 's 


292 


%ost  Hrt  of  IReaoina 


General 

fnformas 

tion 


a  plain  question  between  a  man's  devouring 
his  paper  or  letting  his  paper  devour  him,  of 
course  the  only  way  to  do  is  to  begin  the  day 
by  reading  something  else,  or  by  reading  it  in 
ten  minutes  and  forgetting  it  in  ten  more.  One 
would  certainly  rather  be  headlong — a  mere 
heedless,  superficial  globe-trotter  with  one's 
mind,  than  not  to  have  any  mind — to  be  wiped 
out  at  one's  breakfast  table,  to  be  soaked  up 
into  infinity  every  morning,  to  be  drawn  off, 
evaporated  into  all  knowledge,  to  begin  one's 
day  scattered  around  the  edges  of  all  the  world. 
One  would  do  almost  anything  to  avoid  this. 
And  it  is  what  always  happens  if  one  reads  for 
principles  pell-mell. 

All  that  I  am  claiming  for  reading  for  prin- 
ciples is,  that  if  one  reads  for  principles,  one 
really  cannot  miss  it  in  reading.  There  is  al- 
ways something  there,  and  a  man  who  treats  a 
newspaper  as  if  it  were  not  good  enough  for 
him  falls  short  of  himself. 

The  same  is  true  of  desultory  reading  so- 
called,  of  the  habit  of  general  information,  and 
of  the  habit  of  going  about  noticing  things — 
noticing  things  over  one's  shoulder. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  desultory  reading 
is  as  good  if  not  better  for  a  man  than  any 
other  reading  he  can  do,  if  he  organises  it — 
has  habitual  principles  and  swift  channels  of 
thought  to  pour  it  into.  I  do  not  think  it  is  at 
all  unlikely  from  such  peeps  as  we  common 
mortals  get  into  the  minds  of  men  of  genius, 


General  flnformation 


293 


that  their  desultory  reading  (in  the  fine  strenu- 
ous sense)  has  been  the  making  of  them.  The 
intensely  suggestive  habit  of  thought,  the  pre- 
hensile power  in  a  mind,  the  power  of  grasping 
wide-apart  facts  and  impressions,  of  putting 
them  into  prompt  handfuls,  where  anything 
can  be  done  with  them  that  one  likes,  could 
not  possibly  be  cultivated  to  better  advantage 
than  by  the  practice  of  masterful  and  regular 
desultory  reading. 

Certainly  the  one  compelling  trait  in  a  work 
of  genius,  whether  in  music,  painting,  or  litera- 
ture, the  trait  of  untraceableness,  the  semi- 
miraculous  look,  the  feeling  things  give  us 
sometimes,  in  a  great  work  of  art,  of  being  at 
once  impossible  together,  and  inevitable  to- 
gether,— has  its  most  natural  background  in 
what  would  seem  at  first  probably,  to  most 
minds,  incidental  or  accidental  habits  of  obser- 
vation. 

One  always  knows  a  work  of  art  of  the  sec- 
ond rank  by  the  fact  that  one  can  place  one's 
hand  on  big  blocks  of  material  in  it  almost 
everywhere,  material  which  has  been  taken 
bodily  and  moved  over  from  certain  places. 
And  one  always  knows  a  work  of  art  of  the 
first  rank  by  the  fact  that  it  is  absolutely  de- 
fiant and  elusive.  There  is  a  sense  of  infinity 
— a  gathered-from-everywhere  sense  in  it — of 
things  which  belong  and  have  always  belonged 
side  by  side  and  exactly  where  they  are  put, 
but  which  no  one  had  put  there. 


General 

1nforma« 

tion 


294 


Xost  art  of  IReaoina 


General 
Informaa 

tion 


It  would  be  hard  to  think  of  any  intellectual 
or  spiritual  habit  more  likely  to  give  a  man  a 
bi-sexual  or  at  least  a  cross-fertilising  mind, 
than  the  habit  of  masterful,  wilful,  elemental, 
desultory  reading.  The  amount  of  desultory 
reading  a  mind  can  do,  and  do  triumphantly, 
may  be  said  to  be  perhaps  the  supreme  test  of 
the  actual  energy  of  the  mind,  of  the  vital  heat 
in  it,  of  its  melting-down  power,  its  power  of 
melting  everything  through,  and  blending  ev- 
erything in,  to  the  great  central  essence  of  life. 

No  more  adequate  plan,  or,  as  the  architects 
call  it,  no  better  elevation  for  a  man  could  pos- 
sibly be  found  than  a  daily  newspaper  of  the 
higher  type.  For  scope,  points  of  view,  topics, 
directions  of  interest,  catholicity,  many-sided- 
ness, world-wideness,  for  all  the  raw  material 
a  large  and  powerful  man  must  needs  be  made 
out  of,  nothing  could  possibly  excel  a  daily 
newspaper.  Plenty  of  smaller  artists  have  been 
made  in  the  world  and  will  be  made  again  in 
it — hothouse  or  parlour  artists — men  whose 
work  has  very  little  floor-space  in  it,  one-  or 
two-story  men,  and  there  is  no  denying  that 
they  have  their  place,  but  there  never  has  been 
yet,  and  there  never  will  be,  I  venture  to  say, 
a  noble  or  colossal  artist  or  artist  of  the  first 
rank  who  shall  not  have  as  many  stories  in 
him  as  a  daily  newspaper.  The  immortal  is 
the  universal  in  a  man  looming  up.  If  the 
modern  critic  who  is  looking  about  in  this  world 
of  ours  for  the  great  artist  would  look  where 


General  Unformation 


295 


the  small  ones  are  afraid  to  go,  he  would  stand 
a  fair  chance  of  finding  what  he  is  looking  for. 
If  one  were  to  look  about  for  a  general  plan,  a 
rough  draft  or  sketch  of  the  mind  of  an  Im- 
mortal, he  will  find  that  mind  spread  out  before 
him  in  the  interests  and  passions,  the  giant 
sorrows  and  delights  of  his  morning  paper. 

I  am  not  coming  out  in  this  chapter  to  defend 
morning  papers.  One  might  as  well  pop  up  in 
one's  place  on  this  globe,  wherever  one  is  on  it, 
and  say  a  good  word  for  sunrises.  What  im- 
mediately interests  me  in  this  connection  is  the 
point  that  if  a  man  reads  for  principles  in  this 
world  he  will  have  time  and  take  time  to  be 
interested  in  a  great  many  things  in  it.  The 
point  seems  to  be  that  there  is  nothing  too 
great  or  too  small  for  a  human  brain  to  carry 
away  with  it,  if  it  will  have  a  place  to  put  it. 
All  one  has  to  do,  to  get  the  good  of  a  man,  a 
newspaper,  a  book,  or  any  other  action,  a  para- 
graph, or  even  the  blowing  of  a  wind,  is  to 
lift  it  over  to  its  principle,  see  it  and  delight  in 
it  as  a  part  of  the  whole,  of  the  eternal,  and  of 
the  running  gear  of  things.  Reading  for  prin- 
ciples may  make  a  man  seem  very  slow  at  first 
— several  years  slower  than  other  people — but 
as  every  principle  he  reads  with  makes  it  pos- 
sible *o  avoid  at  least  one  experience,  and,  at 
the  smallest  calculation,  a  hundred  books,  he 
soon  catches  up.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  a 
better  device  for  reading  books  through  their 
backs,  for  travelling  with  one's  mind,  than  the 


General 

flnforma- 

tion 


Xost  Hrt  ot  TReafcing 


General 
fnformas 

tion 


habit  of  reading  for  principles.  A  principle  is 
a  sort  of  universal  car-coupling.  One  can  be 
joined  to  any  train  of  thought  in  all  Christen- 
dom with  it,  and  rolled  in  luxury  around  the 
world  in  the  private  car  of  one's  own  mind. 

But  it  is  not  so  much  as  a  luxury  as  a  con- 
venience that  reading  for  principles  appeals  to 
a  vigorous  mind.  It  is  the  short-cut  to  know- 
ledge. The  man  who  is  once  started  in  read- 
ing for  principles  is  not  long  in  distancing  the 
rest  of  us,  because  all  the  reading  that  he  does 
goes  into  growth, — is  saved  up  in  a  few  handy, 
prompt  generalisations.  His  whole  being  be- 
comes alert  and  supple.  He  has  the  under- 
hold  in  dealing  with  nature,  grips  hold  the  law 
of  the  thing  and  rules  it.  He  is  capable  of  far 
reaches  where  others  go  step  by  step.  In 
every  age  of  the  world  of  thought  he  goes 
about  giant-like,  lifting  worlds  with  a  laugh, 
doing  with  the  very  playing  of  his  mind  work 
which  crowds  of  other  minds  toiling  on  their 
crowds  of  facts  could  not  accomplish.  He  is 
only  able  to  do  this  by  being  a  master  of  prin- 
ciples. He  has  made  himself  a  man  who  can 
handle  a  principle,  a  sum-total  of  a  thousand 
facts  as  easily  as  other  men,  men  with  bare 
scientific  minds,  can  handle  one  of  the  facts. 
He  thinks  like  a  god — not  a  very  difficult  thing 
to  do.  Any  man  can  do  it  after  thirty  or  forty 
years,  if  he  gives  himself  the  chance,  if  he  reads 
for  principles,  keeps  his  imagination — the  way 
Emerson  did,  for  instance — sound  and  alive 


General  information 


297 


all  through.  He  does  not  need  to  deny  that 
the  bare  scientific  method,  the  hugging  of  the 
outside  of  a  thing,  the  being  deliberately  super- 
ficial and  literal— the  needing  to  know  all  of 
the  facts,  is  a  useful  and  necessary  method  at 
times;  but  outside  of  his  specialty  he  takes  the 
ground  that  the  scientific  method  is  not  the 
normal  method  through  which  a  man  acquires 
his  knowledge,  but  a  secondary  and  useful 
method  for  verifying  the  knowledge  he  has. 
He  acquires  knowledge  through  the  constant 
exercise  of  his  mind  with  principles.  He  is  full 
of  subtle  experiences  he  never  had.  He  ap- 
pears to  other  minds,  perhaps,  to  go  to  the  truth 
with  a  flash,  but  he  probably  does  not.  He 
does  not  have  to  go  to  the  truth.  He  has  the 
truth  on  the  premises  right  where  he  can  get 
at  it,  in  its  most  convenient,  most  compact  and 
spiritual  form.  To  write  or  think  or  act  he  has 
but  to  strike  down  through  the  impressions, 
the  experiences, — the  saved-up  experiences, — 
of  his  life,  and  draw  up  their  principles. 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  from  time  to  time 
among  the  good  of  late  about  the  passing  of 
the  sermon  as  a  practical  working  force.  A 
great  deal  has  been  said  among  the  literary 
about  the  passing  of  the  essay.  Much  has  been 
said  also  about  the  passing  of  poetry  and  the 
passing  of  religion  in  our  modern  life.  It 
would  not  be  hard  to  prove  that  what  has  been 
called,  under  the  pressure  of  the  moment,  the 
passing  of  religion  and  poetry,  and  of  the 


General 

1nforma3 

tion 


298 


%ost  Brt  of 


General 

flnforma* 

tion 


sermon  and  the  essay,  could  fairly  be  traced  to 
the  temporary  failure  of  education,  the  disap- 
pearance in  the  modern  mind  of  the  power  of 
reading  for  principles.  The  very  farm-hands 
of  New  Kngland  were  readers  for  principles 
once — men  who  looked  back  of  things — philo- 
sophers. Philosophers  grew  like  the  grass  on 
a  thousand  hills.  Everybody  was  a  philosopher 
a  generation  ago.  The  temporary  obscuration 
of  religion  and  poetry  and  the  sermon  and  the 
essay  at  the  present  time  is  largely  due  to  the 
fact  that  generalisation  has  been  trained  out  of 
our  typical  modern  minds.  We  are  mobbed 
with  facts.  We  are  observers  of  the  letter  of 
things  rather  than  of  the  principles  and  spirits 
of  things.  The  letter  has  been  heaped  upon  us. 
Poetry  and  religion  and  the  essay  and  the  ser- 
mon are  all  alike,  in  that  they  are  addressed  to 
what  can  be  taken  for  granted  in  men — to  sum- 
totals  of  experience — the  power  of  seeing  sum- 
totals.  They  are  addressed  to  generalising 
minds.  The  essayist  of  the  highest  rank  in- 
duces conviction  by  playing  upon  the  power  of 
generalisation,  by  arousing  the  associations 
and  experiences  that  have  formed  the  princi- 
ples of  his  reader's  mind.  He  makes  his  ap- 
peal to  the  philosophic  imagination. 

It  is  true  that  a  man  may  not  be  infallible  in 
depending  upon  his  imagination  or  principle- 
gathering  organ  for  acquiring  knowledge,  and 
in  the  nature  of  things  it  is  subject  to  correction 
and  verification,  but  as  a  positive,  practical, 


But 299 

economical  working  organ  in  a  world  as  large      Kut 
as  this,  an  imagination  answers  the  purpose  as 
well  as  anything.     To  a  finite  man  who  finds 
himself  in  an  infinite  world  it  is  the  one  pos- 
sible practicable  outfit  for  living  in  it. 

Reading  for  principles  is  its  most  natural 
gymnasium. 

VI 

But  — 


I  had  finished  writing  these  chapters  on  the 
philosophic  mind,  and  was  just  reading  them 
over,  thinking  how  true  they  were,  and  how 
valuable  they  were  for  me,  and  how  I  must  act 
on  them,  when  I  heard  a  soft  ' '  Pooh ! ' '  from 
somewhere  way  down  in  the  depths  of  my  be- 
ing. When  I  had  stopped  and  thought,  I  saw 
it  was  my  Soul  trying  to  get  my  attention.  "  I 
do  not  want  you  always  reading  for  principles," 
said  my  Soul  stoutly,  "reading  for  a  philo- 
sophic mind.  I  do  not  want  a  philosophic 
mind  on  the  premises." 

"Very  well,"  I  said. 

"  You  do  not  want  one  yourself,"  my  Soul 
said,  "  you  would  be  bored  to  death  with  one 
— witli  a  mind  that  's  always  reading  for  prin- 
ciples! " 

"  I  'm  not  so  sure,"  I  said. 

"  You  always  are  with  other  people's." 

"  Well,  there  's  Meakins,"  I  admitted. 


300 


%ost  art  ot 


»ut —  '  You  would  n't  want  a  Meakins  kind  of  a 

mind,  would  you  ?  ' '  (Meakins  is  always  read- 
ing for  principles.) 

I  refused  to  answer  at  once.  I  knew  I  did  n't 
want  Meakins' s,  but  I  wanted  to  know  why. 
Then  I  fell  to  thinking.  Hence  this  chapter. 

Meakins  has  changed,  I  said  to  myself.  The 
trouble  with  him  is  n't  that  he  reads  for  prin- 
ciples, but  he  is  getting  so  he  cannot  read  for 
anything  else.  What  a  man  really  wants,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  the  use  of  a  philosophic  mind. 
He  wants  one  where  he  can  get  at  it,  where  he 
can  have  all  the  benefit  of  it  without  having  to 
live  with  it.  It 's  quite  another  matter  when  a 
man  gives  his  mind  up,  his  own  everyday  mind 
— the  one  he  lives  with — lets  it  be  coldly,  de- 
liberately philosophised  through  and  through. 
It  's  a  kind  of  disease. 

When  Meakins  visits  me  now,  the  morning 
after  he  is  gone  I  take  a  piece  of  paper  and 
sum  his  visit  up  in  a  row  of  propositions. 
When  he  came  before  five  years  ago — his  visit 
was  summed  up  in  a  great  desire  in  me,  a  lift, 
a  vow  to  the  universe.  He  had  the  same  ideas, 
but  they  all  glowed  out  into  a  man.  They 
came  to  me  as  a  man  and  for  a  man — a  free, 
emancipated,  emancipating,  world  -  loving, 
world-making  man — a  man  out  in  the  open, 
making  all  the  world  his  comrade.  His  appeal 
was  personal. 

Visiting  with  him  now  is  like  sitting  down 
with  a  stick  or  pointer  over  you  and  being  com- 


But 301 

pelled  to  study  a  map.  He  does  n't  care  any-  JBut 
thing  about  me  except  as  one  more  piece  of 
paper  to  stamp  his  map  on.  And  he  does  n'  t 
care  anything  about  the  world  he  has  the  map 
of,  except  that  it  is  the  world  that  goes  with 
his  map.  When  a  man  gets  into  the  habit  of 
always  reading  for  principles  back  of  things — 
back  of  real,  live,  particular  things — he  be- 
comes inhuman.  He  forgets  the  things. 
Meakins  bores  people,  because  he  is  becoming 
inhuman.  He  treats  human  beings  over  and 
over  again  unconsciously,  when  he  meets  them, 
as  mere  generalisations  on  legs.  His  mind 
seems  a  great  sea  of  abstractions — just  a  few 
real  things  floating  palely  around  in  it  for  illus- 
trations. When  I  try  to  rebuke  him  for  being 
a  mere  philosopher  or  man  without  hands,  he 
is  "  setting  his  universe  in  order,"  he  says — 
making  his  surveys.  He  may  be  living  in  his 
philosophic  mind  now,  breaking  out  his  intel- 
lectual roads  but  he  is  going  to  travel  on  them 
later,  he  explains. 

In  the  meantime  I  notice  one  thing  about 
the  philosophic  mind.  It  not  only  does  not  do 
things.  It  cannot  even  be  talked  with.  It  is 
not  interested  in  things  in  particular.  There 
is  something  garrulously,  pedagogically  unreal 
about  it, — at  least  there  is  about  Meakins's. 
You  cannot  so  much  as  mention  a  real  or  par- 
ticular thing  to  Meakins  but  he  brings  out  a 
row  of  fifteen  or  twenty  principles  that  go 
with  it,  which  his  mind  has  peeked  around  and 


302 


%ost  Brt  of  TReaMng 


«ut —  found  behind  it.  By  the  time  he  has  floated 
out  about  fifteen  of  them — of  these  principles 
back  of  a  thing — you  begin  to  wonder  if  the 
thing  was  there  for  the  principles  to  be  back  of. 
You  hope  it  was  n't. 

As  fond  as  I  am  of  him,  I  cannot  get  at  him 
nowadays  in  a  conversation.  He  is  always  just 
around  back  of  something.  He  is  a  ghost.  I 
come  home  praying  Heaven,  every  time  I  see 
him,  not  to  let  me  evaporate.  He  talks  about 
the  future  of  humanity  by  the  week,  but  I 
find  he  does  n't  notice  humanity  in  particu- 
lar. You  cannot  interest  him  in  talking  to 
him  about  himself,  or  even  in  letting  him  do 
his  own  talking  about  himself.  He  is  a  mere 
detail  to  himself.  You  are  another  detail. 
What  you  are  and  what  he  is  are  both  mere 
footnotes  to  a  philosophy.  All  history  is  a  foot- 
note to  it — or  at  best  a  marginal  illustration. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  communing  with 
Meakins  unless  you  use  (as  I  do)  a  torpedo  or 
battering-ram  as  a  starter.  If  you  let  him  have 
his  way  he  sits  in  his  chair  and  in  his  deep, 
beautiful  voice  addresses  a  row  of  remarks  to 
The  Future  in  General — the  only  thing  big 
enough  or  worth  while  to  talk  to.  He  sits 
perfectly  motionless  (except  tie  whites  of  his 
eyes)  and  talks  deeply  and  tenderly  and  in- 
structively to  the  Next  Few  Hundred  Years — 
to  posterity,  to  babes  not  yet  in  their  mothers' 
wombs,  while  his  dearest  friends  sit  by. 

If  ever  there  was  a  man  who  could  take  a 


303 


whole  roomful  of  warm,  vital  people,  sitting  »ut 
right  next  to  him,  pulsing  and  glowing  in  their 
joys  and  their  sins,  and  with  one  single  heroic 
motion  of  an  imperious  hand  drop  them  softly 
and  lovingly  over  into  Fatuity  and  Oblivion  in 
five  minutes  and  leave  them  out  of  the  world 
before  their  own  eyes,  it  is  Theophilus  Mea- 
kins.  I  try  sometimes  —  but  I  cannot  really  do 
it. 

He  does  not  really  commune  with  things  or 
with  persons  at  all.  He  gets  what  he  wants 
out  of  them.  You  feel  him  putting  people, 
when  he  meets  them,  through  his  philosophy. 
He  makes  them  over  while  they  wait,  into  ex- 
tracts. A  man  may  keep  on  afterward  living 
and  growing,  throbbing  and  being,  but  he  does 
not  exist  to  Meakins  except  in  his  bottle.  A 
man  cannot  help  feeling  with  Meakins  after- 
ward the  way  milk  feels  probably,  if  it  could 
only  express  it,  when  it  's  been  put  through 
one  of  these  separators,  had  the  cream  taken 
off  of  it.  Half  the  world  is  skim-milk  to  him. 
But  what  does  it  matter  to  Meakins  ?  He  has 
them  in  his  philosophy.  He  does  the  same 
way  with  things  as  with  people.  He  puts  in 
all  nature  as  a  parenthesis,  and  a  rather  conde- 
scending, explanatory  one  at  that,  a  symbol,  a 
kind  of  beckoning,  an  index-finger  to  God. 
He  never  notices  a  tree  for  itself.  A  great  elm 
would  have  to  call  out  to  him,  fairly  shout  at 
him,  right  under  its  arms:  "  Oh,  Theophilus 
Meakins,  author  of  The  Habit  of  Eternity, 


3°4 


%ost  art  of  TCeaofng 


*ut —  author  of  The  Evolution  of  the  Ego  look 
at  ME,  I  also  am  alive,  even  as  thou  art. 
Canst  thou  not  stop  one  moment  and  be  glad 
with  me  ?  Have  I  not  a  thousand  leaves  glis- 
tening and  glorying  in  the  great  sun  ?  Have 
I  not  a  million  roots  feeling  for  the  stored-up 
light  in  the  ground,  reaching  tip  God  to  me 
out  of  the  dark  ?  Have  I  not " — "  It  is  one  of 
the  principles  of  the  flux  of  society, ' '  breaks  in 
Theophilus  Meakins,  "as  illustrated  in  all  the 
processes  of  the  natural  world — the  sap  of  this 
tree,"  said  he,  "for  instance,"  brushingtheelm- 
tree  off  into  space,  ' '  that  the  future  of  mankind 
depends  and  always  must  depend  upon ' ' 

"  The  flux  of  society  be ,"  said  I  in  holy 

wrath.  I  stopped  him  suddenly,  the  elm-tree 
still  holding  its  great  arms  above  us.  ' '  Do 
you  suppose  that  God,"  I  said,  "  is  in  any  such 
small  business  as  to  make  an  elm-tree  like  this 
— like  THIS  (look  at  it,  man!),  and  put  it  on 
the  earth,  have  it  waving  around  on  it,  just  to 
illustrate  one  of  your  sermons?  Now,  my  dear 
fellow,  I  'm  not  going  to  have  you  lounging 
around  in  your  mind  with  an  elm-tree  like  this 
any  longer.  I  want  you  to  come  right  over  to 
it,"  said  I,  taking  hold  of  him,  "  and  sit  down 
on  one  of  its  roots,  and  lean  up  against  its 
trunk  and  learn  something,  live  with  it  a  min- 
ute— get  blessed  by  it.  The  flux  of  society  can 
wait,"  I  said. 

Meakins  is  always  tractable  enough,  when 
shouted  at,  or  pounded  on  a  little.  We  sat 


But 305 

down  under  the  tree  for  quite  a  while,  perfectly      Sut  • 
stilL    I  can't  say  what  it  did  for  Meakins.    But 
it  helped  me — just  barely  leaning  against  the 
trunk  of  it  helped  me,  under  the  circumstances, 
a  great  deal. 

No  one  will  believe  it,  I  suppose,  but  we 
hadn't  gotten  any  more  than  fifteen  feet  away 
from  the  shadow  of  that  tree  when  "  The 
principles  of  the  flux  of  society,"  said  he, 
"demand " 

"  Now,  my  dear  fellow,"  I  said,  "  there  are 
a  lot  more  elm-trees  we  really  ought  to  take  in, 
on  this  walk.  We ' ' 

"I  SAY!"  said  Meakins,  his  great  voice 
roaring  on  my  little  polite,  opposing  sentence 
like  surf  over  a  pebble,  ' '  that  the  princi- 
ples  " 

Then  I  grew  wroth.  I  always  do  when 
Meakins  treats  what  I  say  j  ust  as  a  pebble  to 
get  more  roar  out  of,  on  the  great  bleak  shore 
of  his  thoughts.  "  No  one  says  anything!  "  I 
cried;  "  if  any  one  says  anything — if  you  say 
another  word,  my  dear  fellow,  on  this  walk,  I 
will  sing  Old  Hundred  as  loud  as  I  can  all  the 
way  home." 

He  promised  to  be  good — after  a  half-mile  or 
so.  I  caught  him  looking  at  me,  harking  back 
to  an  old,  wonderfully  sweet,  gentle,  human, 
understanding  smile  he  has — or  used  to  have 
before  he  was  a  philosopher. 

Then  he  quietly  mentioned  a  real  thing  and 
we  talked  about  real  things  for  four  miles. 


306 


Olost  Hrt  of 


»ut  —  I  remember  we  sat  under  the  stars  that  night 
after  the  world  was  folded  up,  and  asleep,  and 
I  think  we  really  felt  the  stars  as  we  sat  there 
— not  as  a  roof  for  theories  of  the  world,  but  we 
felt  them  as  stars — shared  the  night  with  them, 
lit  our  hearts  at  them.  Then  we  silently,  hap- 
pily, at  last,  both  of  us,  like  awkward,  won- 
dering boys,  went  to  bed. 


3°7 


III— Reading   Down 
Through 


flnsifce 

IT  is  always  the  same  way.  I  no  sooner  get 
a  good,  pleasant,  interesting,  working  idea, 
like  this  "Reading  for  Principles,"  arranged 
and  moved  over,  and  set  up  in  my  mind,  than 
some  insinuating,  persistent,  concrete  human 
being  comes  along,  works  his  way  in  to  illus- 
trate it,  and  spoils  it.  Here  is  Meakins,  for 
instance.  I  have  been  thinking  on  the  other 
side  of  my  thought  every  time  I  have  thought 
of  him.  I  have  no  more  sympathy  than  any 
one  with  a  man  who  spends  all  his  time  going 
round  and  round  in  his  reading  and  everything 
else,  swallowing  a  world  up  in  principles. 
"Why  should  a  good,  live,  sensible  man,"  I 


3o8 


Xost  Brt  ot 


On  JBeimi 
Xonct? 
witba 
£006 


feel  like  saying,  ' '  go  about  in  a  world  like  this 
stowing  his  truths  into  principles,  where,  half 
the  time,  he  cannot  get  at  them  himself,  and 
no  one  else  would  want  to?"  Going  about 
swallowing  one's  experience  up  in  principles  is 
very  well  so  far  as  it  goes.  But  it  is  far  better 
to  go  about  swallowing  up  one's  principles  into 
one's  self. 

A  man  who  has  lived  and  read  into  himself 
for  many  years  does  not  need  to  read  verjr 
many  books.  He  has  the  gist  of  nine  out  of 
ten  new  books  that  are  published.  He  knows, 
or  as  good  as  knows,  what  is  in  them,  by  tak- 
ing a  long,  slow  look  at  his  own  heart.  So 
does  everybody  else. 


II 


<S>n  Being  Xonels  witb  a  Boofe 

,  The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  said  that  as  far  as  he 
could  make  out,  judging  from  the  way  I  talked, 
my  main  ambition  in  the  world  seemed  to  be  to 
write  a  book  that  would  throw  all  publishers 
and  libraries  out  of  employment.  "  And  what 
will  your  book  amount  to,  when  you  get  it 
done?"  he  said.  "  If  it  's  convincing  —  the 
way  it  ought  to  be — it  will  merely  convince 
people  they  ought  n't  to  have  read  it." 

"And  that's  been  done  before,"  I  said. 
"  Almost  any  book  could  do  it."  I  ventured 
to  add  that  I  thought  people  grew  intelligent 


XonelE  witb  a  Booh 


3°9 


enough  in  one  of  my  books — even  in  the  first 
two  or  three  chapters,  not  to  read  the  rest  of  it. 
I  said  all  I  hoped  to  accomplish  was  to  get  peo- 
ple to  treat  other  men's  books  in  the  same  way 
that  they  treated  mine — treat  everything  that 
way — take  things  for  granted,  get  the  spirit  of 
a  thing,  then  go  out  and  gloat  on  it,  do  some- 
thing with  it,  live  with  it — anything  but  this 
going  on  page  after  page  using  the  spirit  of  a 
thing  all  up,  reading  with  it. 

' '  Reading  down  through  in  a  book  seems  a 
great  deal  more  important  to  me  than  merely 
reading  the  book  through. ' ' 

I  expected  that  The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  would  ask 
me  what  I  meant  by  reading  down  through, 
but  he  did  n't.  He  was  still  at  large,  worry- 
ing about  the  world.  "I  have  no  patience 
with  it — your  idea,"  he  broke  out.  "  It  's  all 
in  the  air.  It  's  impractical  enough,  anyway, 
just  as  an  idea,  and  it 's  all  the  more  impracti- 
cal when  it 's  carried  out.  So  far  as  I  can  see, 
at  the  rate  you  're  carrying  on,"  said  The  P.  G. 
S.  of  M.,  "  what  with  improving  the  world  and 
all  with  your  book,  there  is  n't  going  to  be 
anything  but  You  and  your  Book  left." 

"Might  be  worse,"  I  said.  "What  one 
wants  in  a  book  after  the  first  three  or  four 
chapters,  or  in  a  world  either,  it  seems  to  me, 
is  not  its  facts  merely,  nor  its  principles,  but 
one  's  self — one's  real  relation  of  one's  real 
self,  I  mean,  to  some  real  fact.  If  worst  came 
to  worst  and  I  had  to  be  left  all  alone,  I  'd 


lone  I  v 
witb  a 
Sooft 


3io 


%ost  art  ot 


On  JSdng 

lonely 

witba 

JGooh 


rather  be  alone  with  myself,  I  think,  than  with 
anybody.  It 's  a  deal  better  than  being  lonely 
the  way  we  all  are  nowadays — with  such  a  lot 
of  other  people  crowding  round,  that  one  has 
to  be  lonely  with,  and  books  and  newspapers 
and  things  besides.  One  has  to  be  lonely  so 
much  in  civilisation,  there  are  so  many  things 
and  persons  that  insist  on  one's  coming  over 
and  being  lonely  with  them,  that  being  lonely 
in  a  perfectly  plain  way,  all  by  one's  self— the 
very  thought  of  it  seems  to  me,  comparatively 
speaking,  a  relief.  It  's  not  what  it  ought  to 
be,  but  it  's  something." 

I  feel  the  same  way  about  being  lonely  with 
a  book.  I  find  that  the  only  way  to  keep  from 
being  lonely  in  a  book — that  is,  to  keep  from 
being  crowded  on  to  the  outside  of  it,  after  the 
first  three  or  four  chapters — is  to  read  the  first 
three  or  four  chapters  all  over  again — read 
them  down  through.  I  have  to  get  hold  of  my 
principles  in  them,  and  then  I  have  to  work 
over  my  personal  relation  to  them.  When  I 
make  sure  of  that,  when  I  make  sure  of  my 
personal  relation  to  the  author,  and  to  his 
ideas,  and  there  is  a  fairly  acquainted  feeling 
with  both  of  us,  then  I  can  go  on  reading  for 
all  I  am  worth — or  all  he  is  worth  anyway, 
whichever  breaks  down  first — and  no  more  said 
about  it.  Everything  means  something  to 
everybody  when  one  reads  down  through.  The 
only  way  an  author  and  reader  can  keep  from 
wasting  each  other's  time,  it  seems  to  me,  at 


"Keeping  ©tber  /IDinfcs  ©ff 


least  from  having  spells  of  wasting  it,  is  to 
begin  by  reading  down  through. 

Ill 


Ikeeping  <§>tber 


What  I  really  mean  by  reading  down  through 
in  a  book,  I  suppose,  is  reading  down  through 
in  it  to  myself.  I  dare  say  this  does  not  seem 
worthy.  It  is  quite  possible,  too,  that  there  is 
no  real  defence  for  it  —  I  mean  for  my  being  so 
much  interested  in  myself  in  the  middle  of 
other  people's  books.  My  theory  about  it  is 
that  the  most  important  thing  in  this  world  for 
a  man's  life  is  his  being  original  in  it.  Being 
original  consists,  I  take  it,  not  in  being  differ- 
ent, but  in  being  honest  —  really  having  some- 
thing in  one's  own  inner  experience  which  one 
has  anyway,  and  which  one  knows  one  has, 
and  which  one  has  all  for  one's  own,  whether 
any  one  else  has  ever  had  it  or  not.  Being 
original  consists  in  making  over  everything 
one  sees  and  reads,  into  one's  self. 

Making  over  what  one  reads  into  one's  self 
may  be  said  to  be  the  only  way  to  have  a  really 
safe  place  for  knowledge.  If  a  man  takes  his 
knowledge  and  works  it  all  over  into  what  he 
is,  sense  and  spirit,  it  may  cost  more  at  first, 
but  it  is  more  economical  in  the  long  run,  be- 
cause none  of  it  can  possibly  be  lost.  And  it 
can  all  be  used  on  the  place. 


fteeping 

Otbcr 


3I2 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaotna 


Keeping 

Otbcr 


I  do  not  know  how  it  is  with  others  nowa- 
days, but  I  find  that  this  feeling  of  originality 
in  an  experience,  in  my  own  case,  is  exceed- 
ingly hard  to  keep.  It  has  to  be  struggled  for. 

Of  course,  one  has  a  theory  in  a  general  way 
that  one  does  not  want  an  original  mind  if  he 
has  to  get  it  by  keeping  other  people's  minds 
off,  and  yet  there  is  a  certain  sense  in  which  if 
he  does  not  do  it  at  certain  times — have  regu- 
lar periods  of  keeping  other  people's  minds  off, 
he  would  lose  for  life  the  power  of  ever  finding 
his  own  under  them.  Most  men  one  knows 
nowadays,  if  they  were  to  spend  all  the  rest  of 
their  lives  peeling  other  men's  minds  off,  would 
not  get  down  to  their  own  before  they  died.  It 
seems  to  be  supposed  that  what  a  mind  is  for — 
at  least  in  civilisation — is  to  have  other  men's 
minds  on  top  of  it. 

It  is  the  same  way  in  books — at  least  I  find 
it  so  myself  when  I  get  to  reading  in  a  book, 
reading  so  fast  I  cannot  stop  in  it.  Nearly  all 
books,  especially  the  good  ones,  have  a  way  of 
overtaking  a  man — riding  his  originality  down. 
It  seems  to  be  assumed  that  if  a  man  ever  did 
get  down  to  his  own  mind  by  accident,  whether 
in  a  book  or  anywhere  else,  he  would  not  know 
what  to  do  with  it. 

And  this  is  not  an  unreasonable  assumption. 
Even  the  man  who  gets  down  to  his  mind  reg- 
ularly hardly  knows  what  to  do  with  it  part  of 
the  time.  But  it  makes  having  a  mind  inter- 
esting. There  's  a  kind  of  pleasant,  lusty  feel- 


Bacfewarfcs 


ing  in  it  —  a  feeling  of  reality  and  honesty  that 
makes  having  a  mind—  even  merely  one's  own 
mind  —  seem  almost  respectable. 


IV 


IReaMng 
DSacfewarfcs 


Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  gives  the  precedence  to 
the  Outside,  to  authority  instead  of  originality, 
in  the  early  stages  of  education,  because  when 
he  went  to  Italy  he  met  the  greatest  experience 
of  his  life.  He  found  that  much  of  his  orig- 
inality was  wrong. 

If  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  had  gone  to  Italy 
earlier  he  would  never  have  been  heard  of  ex- 
cept as  a  copyist,  lecturer,  or  colour-commen- 
tator. The  real  value  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds'  s 
"  Discourses  on  Art  "  is  the  man  in  spite  of  the 
lecturer.  What  the  man  stands  for  is,  —  Be 
original.  Get  headway  of  personal  experience, 
some  power  of  self-teaching.  Then  when  you 
have  something  to  work  on,  organs  that  act 
and  react  on  what  is  presented  to  them,  con- 
front your  Italy  —  whatever  it  may  be  —  and  the 
Past,  and  give  yourself  over  to  it.  The  result 
is  paradox  and  power,  a  receptive,  creative 
man,  an  obeying  and  commanding,  but  self- 
centred  and  self-poised  man,  world-open,  sub- 
ject to  the  whole  world  and  yet  who  has  a 
whole  world  subject  to  him,  either  by  turns  or 
at  will. 


3*4 


%ost  Hrt  of  IReaoing 


SSachwarbs 


What  Sir  Joshua  conveys  to  his  pupils  is  not 
his  art,  but  his  mere  humility  about  his  art — 
i.  e.,  his  most  belated  experience,  his  finishing 
touch,  as  an  artist. 

The  result  is  that  having  accidentally  re- 
ceived an  ideal  education,  having  begun  his 
education  properly,  with  self-command,  he 
completed  his  career  with  a  kind  of  Reynolds- 
ocracy  —  a  complacent,  teachery,  levelling- 
down  command  of  others.  While  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds  was  an  artist,  he  became  one  because 
he  did  not  follow  his  own  advice.  The  fact 
that  he  would  have  followed  it  if  he  had  had 
a  chance  shows  what  his  art  shows,  namely, 
that  he  did  not  intend  to  be  any  more  original 
than  he  could  help.  It  is  interesting,  however, 
that  having  acquired  the  blemish  of  originality 
in  early  youth,  he  never  could  get  rid  of  enough 
of  it  before  he  died,  not  to  be  tolerated  among 
the  immortals. 

His  career  is  in  many  ways  the  most  striking 
possible  illustration  of  what  can  be  brought  to 
pass  when  a  human  being  without  genius  is 
by  accident  brought  up  with  the  same  princi- 
ples and  order  of  education  and  training  that 
men  of  genius  have — education  by  one's  self; 
education  by  others,  under  the  direction  of 
one's  self.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  would  have 
been  incapable  of  education  by  others  under 
direction  of  himself,  if  he  had  not  been  kept  ig- 
norant and  creative  and  English,  long  enough 
to  get  a  good  start  with  himself  before  he  went 


Bacfewarfcs 


315 


down  to  Italy  to  run  a  race  with  Five  Hundred 
Years.  In  his  naive,  almost  desperate  shame 
over  the  plight  of  being  almost  a  genius,  he 
overlooks  this,  but  his  fame  is  based  upon  it. 
He  devoted  his  old  age  to  trying  to  train  young 
men  into  artists  by  teaching  them  to  despise 
their  youth  in  their  youth,  because,  when  he 
was  an  old  man,  he  despised  his. 

What  seems  to  be  necessary  is  to  strike  a 
balance,  in  one's  reading. 

It  's  all  well  enough  ;  indeed,  there  's  no- 
thing better  than  having  one's  originality  rid- 
den down.  One  wants  it  ridden  down  half  the 
time.  The  trouble  comes  in  making  provision 
for  catching  up,  for  getting  one's  breath  after 
it.  I  have  found,  for  instance,  that  it  has  be- 
come absolutely  necessary  so  far  as  I  am  con- 
cerned, if  I  am  to  keep  my  little  mind's  start 
in  the  world,  to  begin  the  day  by  not  reading 
the  newspaper  in  the  morning.  Unless  I  can 
get  headway — some  thought  or  act  or  cry  or 
joy  of  my  own — something  that  is  definitely  in 
my  own  direction  first,  there  seems  to  be  no 
hope  for  me  all  day  long.  Most  people,  I 
know,  would  not  agree  to  this.  They  like  to 
take  a  swig  of  all-space,  a  glance  at  everybody 
while  the  world  goes  round,  before  they  settle 
down  io  their  own  little  motor  on  it.  They 
like  to  feel  that  the  world  is  all  right  before 
they  go  ahead.  So  would  I,  but  I  have  tried 
it  again — and  again.  The  world  is  too  much 
for  me  in  the  morning.  My  own  little  motor 


•Reabing 

33acfewar&s 


3i6 


Xost  Bit  of  IReaoino 


•ReaMng 


comes  to  a  complete  stop.  I  simply  want  to 
watch  the  Big  One  going  round  and  round.  I 
cannot  seem  to  stop  somehow — begin  puttering 
once  more  with  my  Little  One.  If  I  begin  at 
all,  I  have  to  begin  at  once.  In  my  heart  I 
feel  the  Big  One  over  me  all  the  while,  circling 
over  me,  blessing  me.  But  I  keep  from  notic- 
ing. I  know  no  other  way,  and  drive  on.  The 
world  is  getting  to  be — has  to  be — to  me  a 
purely  afternoon  or  evening  affair.  I  have  a 
world  of  my  own  for  morning  use.  I  hold  to 
it,  one  way  or  the  other,  with  a  cheerful  smile 
or  like  grim  death,  until  the  clock  says  twelve 
and  the  sun  turns  the  corner,  and  the  book 
drops.  It  does  not  seem  to  make  very  much 
difference  what  kind  of  a  world  I  am  in,  or 
what  is  going  on  in  it,  so  that  it  is  all  my  own, 
and  the  only  way  I  know  to  do,  is  to  say  or 
read  or  write  or  use  the  things  first  in  it  which 
make  it  my  own  the  most.  The  one  thing  I 
want  in  the  morning  is  to  let  my  soul  light  its 
own  light,  appropriate  some  one  thing,  glow  it 
through  with  itself.  When  I  have  satisfied  the 
hunger  for  making  a  bit  of  the  great  world  over 
into  my  world,  I  am  ready  for  the  world  as  a 
world  —  streets  and  newspapers  of  it, —  silent 
and  looking,  in  it,  until  sleep  falls. 

It  is  because  men  lie  down  under  it,  allow 
themselves  to  be  rolled  over  by  it,  that  the 
modern  newspaper,  against  its  will,  has  become 
the  great  distracting  machine  of  modern  times. 
As  I  live  and  look  about  me,  everywhere  I  find 


Bacfewarfcs 


31? 


a  great  running  to  and  fro  of  editors  across  the 
still  earth.  Every  editor  has  his  herd,  is  a  *acftwar68 
kind  of  bell-wether,  has  a  great  paper  herd 
flocking  at  his  heels.  "  Is  not  the  world 
here?  "  I  say,  "  and  am  I  not  here  to  look  at 
it  ?  Can  I  really  see  a  world  better  by  joining 
a  Cook's  Excursion  on  it,  sweeping  round  the 
earth  in  a  column,  seeing  everything  in  a  col- 
umn, looking  over  the  shoulder  of  a  crowd  ? " 
Sometimes  it  seems  as  if  the  whole  modern, 
reading,  book-and-paper  outfit  were  simply  a 
huge,  crunching  Mass- Machine — a  machine  for 
arranging  every  man's  mind  from  the  outside. 
Originality  may  be  said  to  depend  upon  a 
balance  of  two  things,  the  power  of  being  in- 
terested in  other  people's  minds  and  the  power 
of  being  more  interested  in  one's  own.  In  its 
last  analysis,  it  is  the  power  a  man's  mind  has 
of  minding  its  own  business,  which,  even  in 
another  man's  book,  makes  the  book  real  and 
absorbing  to  him.  It  is  the  least  compliment 
one  can  pay  a  book.  The  only  honest  way  to 
commune  with  a  real  man  either  in  a  book  or 
out  of  it  is  to  do  one's  own  share  of  talking. 
Both  the  book  and  the  man  say  better  things 
when  talked  back  to.  In  reading  a  great  book 
one  finds  it  allows  for  this.  In  reading  a  poor 
one  the  only  way  to  make  it  worth  while,  to 
find  anything  in  it,  is  to  put  it  there.  The 
most  self-respecting  course  when  one  finds 
one's  self  in  the  middle  of  a  poor  book  is  to 
turn  right  around  in  it,  and  write  it  one's  self. 


%ost  Hrt  of  1Reaoin0 


tReafclng 

JGacftwar&s 


As  has  been  said  by  Hoffentotter  (in  the  four- 
teenth chapter  of  his  great  masterpiece)  :  "  If 
you  find  that  you  cannot  go  on,  gentle  reader, 
in  the  reading  of  this  book,  pray  read  it  back- 
wards." 

The  original  man,  the  man  who  insists  on 
keeping  the  power  in  a  mind  of  minding  its 
own  business,  is  much  more  humble  than  he 
looks.  All  he  feels  is,  that  his  mind  has  been 
made  more  convenient  to  him  than  to  anybody 
else  and  that  if  anyone  is  going  to  use  it,  he 
must.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  assuming  that  one's 
own  mind  is  superior.  A  very  poor  mind,  on 
the  premises,  put  right  in  with  one's  own  body, 
carefully  fitted  to  it,  to  one's  very  nerves  and 
senses,  is  worth  all  the  other  minds  in  the 
world.  It  may  be  conceit  to  believe  this,  and 
it  may  be  self-preservation.  But,  in  any  case, 
keeping  up  an  interest  in  one's  own  mind  is 
excusable.  Even  the  humblest  man  must  ad- 
mit that  the  first,  the  most  economical,  the 
most  humble,  the  most  necessary  thing  for  a 
man  to  do  in  reading  in  this  world  (if  he  can 
do  it)  is  to  keep  up  an  interest  in  his  own  mind. 


IV — Reading  for  Facts 


(Balling  tbe  flDeeting  to  ©rfcer 

READING  for  persons  makes  a  man  a  poet 
or  artist,  makes  him  dramatic  with  his 
mind — puts  the  world-stage  into  him. 

Reading  for  principles  makes  a  man  a  philos- 
opher. 

Reading  for  facts  makes  a  man 

"  It  does  n't  make  a  man,"  spoke  up  the 
Mysterious  Person. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  I  said,  "  if  he  reads  a  few  of 
them — if  he  takes  time  to  do  something  with 
them — he  can  make  a  man  out  of  them,  if  he 
wants  to,  as  well  as  anything  else." 

The  great  trouble  with  scientific  people  and 
others  who  are  always  reading  for  facts  is  that 
they  forget  what  facts  are  for.  They  use  their 
minds  as  museums.  They  are  like  Ole  Bill 


Calling  tbe 

/Meeting 
to  Or Jcr 


320 


Xost  Hrt  of 


Calling  tbe 

Meeting 
to  OrScr 


Spear.  They  take  you  up  into  their  garret 
and  point  to  a  bushel-basketful  of  something 
and  then  to  another  bushel-basket  half-full  of 
some  more.  Then  they  say  in  deep  tones  and 
with  solemn  faces  :  "  This  is  the  largest  collec- 
tion of  burnt  matches  in  the  world." 

It 's  what  reading  for  facts  brings  a  man  to, 
generally — fact  for  fact's  sake.  He  lunges 
along  for  facts  wherever  he  goes.  He  cannot 
stop.  All  an  outsider  can  do  in  such  cases, 
with  nine  out  of  ten  scientific  or  collecting 
minds,  is  to  watch  them  sadly  in  a  dull,  trance- 
like,  helpless  inertia  of  facts,  sliding  on  to 
Ignorance. 

What  seems  to  be  most  wanted  in  reading  for 
facts  in  a  world  as  large  as  this  is  some  reason- 
able principle  of  economy.  The  great  problem 
of  reading  for  facts  —  travelling  with  one's 
mind — is  the  baggage  problem.  To  have  every 
fact  that  one  needs  and  to  throw  away  every 
fact  that  one  can  get  along  without,  is  the 
secret  of  having  a  comfortable  and  practicable, 
live,  happy  mind  in  modern  knowledge — a 
mind  that  gets  somewhere  —  that  gets  the 
hearts  of  things. 

The  best  way  to  arrange  this  seems  to  be  to 
have  a  sentinel  in  one's  mind  in  reading. 

Every  man  finds  in  his  intellectual  life, 
sooner  or  later,  that  there  are  certain  orders 
and  kinds  of  facts  that  have  a  way  of  coming 
to  him  of  their  own  accord  and  without  being 
asked.  He  is  half  amused  sometimes  and  half 


Calling  tbe  /IDeeting  to 


321 


annoyed  by  them.  He  has  no  particular  use 
for  them.  He  dotes  on  them  some,  perhaps, 
pets  them  a  little — tells  them  to  go  away,  but 
they  keep  coming  back.  Apropos  of  nothing, 
in  the  way  of  everything,  they  keep  hanging 
about  while  he  attends  to  the  regular  business 
of  his  brain,  and  say:  "Why  don't  you  do 
something  with  Me?" 

What  I  would  like  to  be  permitted  to  do  in 
this  chapter  is  to  say  a  good  word  for  these 
involuntary,  helpless,  wistful  facts  that  keep 
tagging  a  man's  mind  around.  I  know  that  I 
am  exposing  myself  in  standing  up  for  them  to 
the  accusation  that  I  have  a  mere  irrelevant, 
sideways,  intellectually  unbusinesslike  sort  of 
a  mind.  I  can  see  my  championship  even 
now  being  gently  but  firmly  set  one  side. 
"  It  's  all  of  a  piece — this  pleasant,  yielding 
way  with  ideas, ' '  people  say.  ' '  It  goes  with 
the  slovenly,  lazy,  useless,  polite  state  of  mind 
always,  and  the  general  ball-bearing  view  of 
life." 

It  seems  to  me  that  if  a  man  has  a  few  invol- 
untary, instinctive  facts  about  him,  facts  that 
fasten  themselves  on  to  his  thoughts  whether 
he  wants  them  there  or  not,  facts  that  keep  on 
working  for  him  of  their  own  accord,  down 
under  the  floor  of  his  mind,  passing  things  up, 
running  invisible  errands  for  him,  making 
short-cuts  for  him — it  seems  to  me  that  if  a 
man  has  a  few  facts  like  this  in  him,  facts  that 
serve  him  like  the  great  involuntary  servants  of 


Calling  tbe 
fleeting 

toOr&ec 


322 


%ost  Hrt  of  IRea&ing 


Calling  tbe 
flDeetlng 

to  Or&cr 


Nature,  whether  they  are  noticed  or  not,  he 
ought  to  find  it  worth  his  while  to  do  some- 
thing in  return,  conduct  his  life  with  reference 
to  them.  They  ought  to  have  the  main  chance 
at  him.  It  seems  reasonable  also  that  his  read- 
ing should  be  conducted  with  reference  to 
them. 

It  is  no  mere  literary  prejudice,  and  it  seems 
to  be  a  truth  for  the  scientist  as  well  as  for  the 
poet,  that  the  great  involuntary  facts  in  a  man's 
life,  the  facts  he  does  not  select,  the  facts  that 
select  him,  the  facts  that  say  to  him,  ' '  Come 
thou  and  live  with  us,  make  a  human  life  out 
of  us  that  men  may  know  us,"  are  the  facts  of 
all  others  which  ought  to  have  their  way  sooner 
or  later  in  the  great  struggling  mass-meeting 
of  his  mind.  I  have  read  equally  in  vain  the 
lives  of  the  great  scientists  and  the  lives  of  the 
great  artists  and  makers,  if  they  are  not  all 
alike  in  this,  that  certain  great  facts  have  been 
yielded  to,  have  been  made  the  presiding  offi- 
cers, the  organisers  of  their  minds.  In  so  far 
as  they  have  been  great,  no  facts  have  been 
suppressed  and  all  facts  have  been  represented; 
but  I  doubt  if  there  has  ever  been  a  life  of  a 
powerful  mind  yet  in  which  a  few  great  facts 
and  a  great  man  were  not  seen  mutually  at- 
tracted to  each  other,  day  and  night, — getting 
themselves  made  over  into  each  other,  mutu- 
ally mastering  the  world. 

Certainly,  if  there  is  one  token  rather  than 
another  of  the  great  scientist  or  poet  in  distinc- 


Symbolic  jfacts 


323 


tion  from  the  small  scientist  or  poet,  it  is  the 
courage  with  which  he  yields  himself,  makes 
his  whole  being  sensitive  and  free  before  his 
instinctive  facts,  gives  himself  fearless  up  to 
them,  allows  them  to  be  the  organisers  of  his 
mind. 

It  seems  to  be  the  only  possible  way  in  read- 
ing for  facts  that  the  mind  of  a  man  can  come 
to  anything  ;  namely,  by  always  having  a 
chairman  (and  a  few  alternates  appointed  for 
life)  to  call  the  meeting  to  order. 

II 

Symbolic  ifacte 

If  the  meeting  is  to  accomplish  anything  be- 
fore it  adjourns  sine  die,  everything  depends 
upon  the  gavel  in  it,  upon  there  being  some 
power  in  it  that  makes  some  facts  sit  down  and 
others  stand  up,  but  which  sees  that  all  facts 
are  represented. 

In  general,  the  more  facts  a  particular  fact 
can  be  said  to  be  a  delegate  for,  the  more  a 
particular  fact  can  be  said  to  represent  other 
facts,  the  more  of  the  floor  it  should  have. 
The  power  of  reading  for  facts  depends  upon  a 
man's  power  to  recognise  symbolic  or  sum-total 
or  senatorial  facts  and  keep  all  other  facts,  the 
general  mob  or  common  run  of  facts,  from  in- 
terrupting. The  amount  of  knowledge  a  man 
is  going  to  be  able  to  master  in  the  world 


Symbolic 
jfacts 


324 


Xost  Hct  ot  TReafcing 


Symbolic 
facts 


depends  upon  the  number  of  facts  he  knows 
how  to  avoid. 

This  is  where  our  common  scientific  train- 
ing— the  manufacturing  of  small  scientists  in 
the  bulk — breaks  down.  The  first  thing  that 
is  done  with  a  young  man  nowadays,  if  he  is 
to  be  made  into  a  scientist,  is  to  take  away  any 
last  vestige  of  power  his  mind  may  have  of 
avoiding  facts.  Everyone  has  seen  it,  and  yet 
we  know  perfectly  well  when  we  stop  to  think 
about  it  that  when  in  the  course  of  his  being 
educated  a  man's  ability  to  avoid  facts  is  taken 
away  from  him,  it  soon  ceases  to  make  very 
much  difference  whether  he  is  educated  or  not. 
He  becomes  a  mere  memory  let  loose  in  the 
universe — goes  about  remembering  everything, 
hit  or  miss.  I  never  see  one  of  these  memory- 
machines  going  about  mowing  things  down 
remembering  them,  but  that  it  gives  me  a  kind 
of  sad,  sudden  feeling  of  being  intelligent.  I 
cannot  quite  describe  the  feeling.  I  am  part 
sorry  and  part  glad  and  part  ashamed  of  being 
glad.  It  depends  upon  what  one  thinks  of, 
one's  own  narrow  escape  or  the  other  man,  or 
the  way  of  the  world.  All  one  can  do  is  to 
thank  God,  silently,  in  some  safe  place  in  one's 
thoughts,  that  after  all  there  is  a  great  deal 
of  the  human  race — always  is — in  every  genera- 
tion who  by  mere  circumstance  cannot  be  edu- 
cated— bowled  over  by  their  memories.  Even 
at  the  worst  only  a  few  hundred  persons  can  be 
made  over  into  redudio-ad-absurdum  Stanley 


Duplicates:  H  iprinciple  of  Economg 


325 


Halls  (that  is,  study  science  under  pupils  of 
the  pupils  of  Stanley  Hall)  and  the  chances 
are  even  now,  as  bad  as  things  are  and  are  get- 
ting to  be,  that  for  several  hundred  years  yet, 
Man,  the  Big  Brother  of  creation,  will  insist  on 
preserving  his  special  distinction  in  it,  the 
thing  thathas  lifted  him  above  the  other  animals 
—  his  inimitable  faculty  for  forgetting  things. 

Ill 

Duplicates :  H  principle  of 
Economy 

I  do  not  suppose  that  anybody  would  submit 
to  my  being  admitted — I  was  black-balled  be- 
fore I  was  born — to  the  brotherhood  of  scien- 
tists. And  yet  it  seems  to  me  that  there  is  a 
certain  sense  in  which  I  am  as  scientific  as 
anyone.  It  seems  to  me,  for  instance,  that  it 
is  a  fairly  scientific  thing  to  do — a  fairly  mat- 
ter-of-fact thing — to  consider  the  actual  nature 
of  facts  and  to  act  on  it.  When  one  considers 
the  actual  nature  of  facts,  the  first  thing  one 
notices  is  that  there  are  too  many  of  them. 
The  second  thing  one  notices  about  facts  is 
that  they  are  not  so  many  as  they  look.  They 
are  mostly  duplicates.  The  small  scientist 
never  thinks  of  this  because  he  never  looks  at 
more  than  one  class  of  facts,  never  allows  him- 
self to  fall  into  any  general,  interesting,  fact- 
comparing  habit.  The  small  poet  never  thinks 


IDuplis 

catee : H 

principle 

of 

Economy 


326 


Xost  Hrt  of 


cates :  B 
principle 

of 
Economy 


of  it  because  he  never  looks  at  facts  at  all.  It 
is  thus  that  it  has  come  to  pass  that  the  most 
ordinary  human  being,  just  living  along,  the 
man  who  has  the  habit  of  general  information, 
is  the  intellectual  superior  of  the  mere  scientists 
about  him  or  the  mere  poets.  He  is  superior 
to  the  mere  poet  because  he  is  interested  in 
knowing  facts,  and  he  is  superior  to  the  minor 
scientist  because  he  does  not  want  to  know  all 
of  them,  or  at  least  if  he  does,  he  never  has 
time  to  try  to,  and  so  keeps  on  knowing  some- 
thing. 

When  one  considers  the  actual  nature  of 
facts,  it  is  obvious  that  the  only  possible  model 
for  a  scientist  of  the  first  class  or  a  poet  of  the 
first  class  in  this  world,  is  the  average  man. 
The  only  way  to  be  an  extraordinary  man, 
master  of  more  of  the  universe  than  any  one 
else,  is  to  keep  out  of  the  two  great  pits  God 
has  made  in  it,  in  which  The  Educated  are 
thrown  away — the  science-pit  and  the  poet-pit. 
The  area  and  power  and  value  of  a  man's  know- 
ledge depend  upon  his  having  such  a  boundless 
interest  in  facts  that  he  will  avoid  all  facts  he 
knows  already  and  go  on  to  new  ones.  The 
rapidity  of  a  man's  education  depends  upon  his 
power  to  scent  a  duplicate  fact  afar  off  and  to 
keep  from  stopping  and  puttering  with  it.  Is 
not  one  fact  out  of  a  thousand  about  a  truth  as 
good  as  the  other  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
to  enjoy  it  with  ?  If  there  were  not  any  more 
truths  or  if  there  were  not  so  many  more  things 


Duplicates:  H  principle  of  Economy 


327 


to  enjoy  in  this  world  than  one  had  time  for, 
it  would  be  different.  It  would  be  superficial, 
I  admit,  not  to  climb  down  into  a  well  and  col- 
lect some  more  of  the  same  facts  about  it,  or 
not  to  crawl  under  a  stone  somewhere  and 
know  what  we  know  already — a  little  harder. 
But  as  it  is — well,  it  does  seem  to  me  that 
when  a  man  has  collected  one  good,  representa- 
tive fact  about  a  thing,  or  at  most  two,  it  is 
about  time  to  move  on  and  enjoy  some  of  the 
others.  There  is  not  a  man  living  dull  enough, 
it  seems  to  me,  to  make  it  worth  while  to  do 
any  other  way.  There  is  not  a  man  living  who 
can  afford,  in  a  world  made  as  this  one  is,  to 
know  any  more  facts  than  he  can  help.  Are 
not  facts  plenty  enough  in  the  world?  Are 
they  not  scattered  everywhere  ?  And  there  are 
not  men  enough  to  go  around.  Let  us  take 
our  one  fact  apiece  and  be  off,  and  be  men  with 
it.  There  is  always  one  fact  about  everything 
which  is  the  spirit  of  all  the  rest,  the  fact  a 
man  was  intended  to  know  and  to  go  on  his 
way  rejoicing  with.  It  may  be  superficial 
withal  and  merely  spiritual,  but  if  there  is  any- 
thing worth  while  in  this  world  to  me,  it  is  not 
to  miss  any  part  of  being  a  man  in  it  that  any 
other  man  has  had.  I  do  not  want  to  know 
what  every  man  knows,  but  I  do  want  to  get 
the  best  of  what  he  knows  and  live  every  day 
with  it.  Oh,  to  take  all  knowledge  for  one's 
province,  to  have  rights  with  all  facts,  to  be 
naive  and  unashamed  before  the  universe,  to 


EHlpIt= 

catcs :  H 

principle 

of 

Economy 


328 


Xost  Hrt  of  IRea&tna 


catcs:  B 

principle 

of 

Economy 


go  forth  fearlessly  to  know  God  in  it,  to  make 
the  round  of  creation  before  one  dies,  to  share 
all  that  has  been  shared,  to  be  all  that  is,  to  go 
about  in  space  saying  halloa  to  one's  soul  in  it, 
in  the  stars  and  in  the  flowers  and  in  children's 
faces,  is  not  this  to  have  lived, —  that  there 
should  be  nothing  left  out  in  a  man's  life  that 
all  the  world  has  had  ? 


V — Reading  for  Results 


Gbe  Blank  paper  jframe 


THE  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  read  a  paper  in  our  club 
the  other  day  which  he  called  '  '  Reading 
for  Results.  '  '  It  was  followed  by  a  somewhat 
warm  discussion,  in  the  course  of  which  so 
many  things  were  said  that  were  not  so  that 
the  entire  club  (before  any  one  knew  it)  had 
waked  up  and  learned  something. 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  took  the  general  ground 
that  most  of  the  men  one  knows  nowadays  had 
never  learned  to  read.  They  read  wastefully. 
Our  common  schools  and  colleges,  he  thought, 
ought  to  teach  a  young  man  to  read  with  a 
purpose.  '  '  When  an  educated  young  man 
takes  up  a  book,  '  '  he  said,  '  '  he  should  feel 
that  he  has  some  business  in  it,  and  attend  to 
it." 


329 


Ube 

ffilanh 

paper 

$  tame  of 

fflinfe 


33° 


SLost  Brt  ot 


Ube 

JSlanfc 

paper 

ft&me  of 


I  said  I  thought  young  men  nowadays  read 
with  purposes  too  much.  Purposes  were  all 
they  had  to  read  with.  "  When  a  man  feels 
that  he  needs  a  purpose  in  front  of  him,  to  go 
through  a  book  with,  when  he  goes  about  in  a 
book  looking  over  the  edge  of  a  purpose  at 
everything,  the  chances  are  that  he  is  missing 
nine  tenths  of  what  the  book  has  to  give." 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  thought  that  one  tenth 
was  enough.  He  did  n't  read  a  book  to  get 
nine  tenths  of  an  author.  He  read  it  to  get 
the  one  tenth  he  wanted — to  find  out  which  it 
was. 

I  asked  him  which  tenth  of  Shakespeare  he 
wanted.  He  said  that  sometimes  he  wanted 
one  tenth  and  sometimes  another. 

"That  is  just  it,"  I  said.  "Everybody 
does.  "It  is  at  the  bottom  and  has  been  at  the 
bottom  of  the  whole  Shakespeare  nuisance  for 
three  hundred  years.  Every  literary  man  we 
have  or  have  had  seems  to  feel  obliged  some- 
how to  read  Shakespeare  in  tenths.  Generally 
he  thinks  he  ought  to  publish  his  tenth — make 
a  streak  across  Shakespeare  with  his  soul  — 
before  he  feels  literary  or  satisfied  or  feels  that 
he  has  a  place  in  the  world.  One  hardly  knows 
a  man  who  calls  himself  really  literary,  who 
reads  Shakespeare  nowadays  except  with  a 
purpose,  with  some  little  side-show  of  his  own 
mind.  It  is  true  that  there  are  still  some  people 
—  not  very  many  perhaps  —  but  we  all  know 
some  people  who  can  be  said  to  understand 


Blanfe  jpapec  fframe  of 


331 


Shakespeare,  who  never  get  so  low  in  their 
minds  as  to  have  to  read  him  with  a  purpose ; 
but  they  are  not  prominent. 

And  yet  there  is  hardly  any  man  who  would 
deny  that  at  best  his  reading  with  a  purpose 
is  almost  always  his  more  anaemic,  official, 
unresourceful,  reading.  It  is  like  putting  a 
small  tool  to  a  book  and  whittling  on  it,  in- 
stead of  putting  one's  whole  self  to  it.  One 
might  as  well  try  to  read  most  of  Shakespeare's 
plays  with  a  screw-driver  or  with  a  wrench  as 
with  a  purpose.  There  is  no  purpose  large 
enough,  that  one  is  likely  to  find,  to  connect 
with  them.  Shakespeare  himself  could  not 
have  found  one  when  he  wrote  them  in  any 
small  or  ordinary  sense.  The  one  possible 
purpose  in  producing  a  work  of  art — in  any 
age — is  to  praise  the  universe  with  it,  love 
something  with  it,  talk  back  to  life  with  it, 
and  the  man  who  attempts  to  read  what  Shake- 
speare writes  with  any  smaller  or  less  general, 
less  overflowing  purpose  than  Shakespeare  had 
in  writing  it  should  be  advised  to  do  his  read- 
ing with  some  smaller,  more  carefully  fitted 
author, — one  nearer  to  his  size.  Of  course  if 
one  wants  to  be  a  mere  authority  on  Shake- 
speare or  a  mere  author  there  is  no  denying 
that  one  can  do  it,  and  do  it  very  well,  by  read- 
ing him  with  some  purpose — some  purpose  that 
is  too  small  to  have  ever  been  thought  of  be- 
fore ;  but  if  one  wants  to  understand  him,  get 
the  wild  native  flavour  and  power  of  him,  he 


Ube 

JGlanft 

paper 

frame  of 


332 


Xost  Hrt  of 


Ube 

JSlanfc 

paper 

jframe  of 

fflitrt 


must  be  read  in  a  larger,  more  vital  and  open 
and  resourceful  spirit — as  a  kind  of  spiritual 
adventure.  Half  the  joy  of  a  great  man,  like 
any  other  great  event,  is  that  one  can  well  af- 
ford— at  least  for  once — to  let  one's  purposes  go. 
"  To  feel  one's  self  lifted  out,  carried  along, 
if  only  for  a  little  time,  into  some  vast  stream  of 
consciousness,  to  feel  great  spaces  around  one's 
human  life,  to  float  out  into  the  universe,  to 
bathe  in  it,  to  taste  it  with  every  pore  of  one's 
body  and  all  one's  soul — this  is  the  one  supreme 
thing  that  the  reading  of  a  man  like  William 
Shakespeare  is  for.  To  interrupt  the  stream 
with  dams,  to  make  it  turn  wheels, — intellectual 
wheels  (mostly  pin-wheels  and  theories)  or  any 
wheels  whatever, — is  to  cut  one's  self  off  from 
the  last  chance  of  knowing  the  real  Shakespeare 
at  all.  A  man  knows  Shakespeare  in  propor- 
tion as  he  gives  himself,  in  proportion  as  he 
lets  Shakespeare  make  a  Shakespeare  of  him,  a 
little  while.  As  long  as  he  is  reading  in  the 
Shakespeare  universe  his  one  business  in  it  is 
to  live  in  it.  He  may  do  no  mighty  work 
there, — pile  up  a  commentary  or  throw  on  a 
footnote, — but  he  will  be  a  might}7  work  him- 
self if  he  let  William  Shakespeare  work  on 
him  some.  Before  he  knows  it  the  universe 
that  Shakespeare  lived  in  becomes  his  uni- 
verse. He  feels  the  might  of  that  universe 
being  gathered  over  to  him,  descending  upon 
him  being  breathed  into  him  day  and  night — 
to  belong  to  him  always. 


Blanfc  paper  fframe  of  flDino 


333 


' '  The  power  and  effect  of  a  book  which  is  a 
real  work  of  art  seems  always  to  consist  in  the 
way  it  has  of  giving  the  nature  of  things  a 
chance  at  a  man,  of  keeping  things  open  to  the 
sun  and  air  of  thought.  To  those  who  cannot 
help  being  interested,  it  is  a  sad  sight  to  stand 
by  with  the  typical  modern  man — especially  a 
student — and  watch  him  go  blundering  about 
in  a  great  book,  cooping  it  up  with  purposes." 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  remarked  somewhere  at 
about  this  point  that  it  seemed  to  him  that  it 
made  a  great  difference  who  an  author  or  reader 
was.  He  suggested  that  my  theory  of  reading 
with  a  not-purpose  worked  rather  better  with 
Shakespeare  than  with  the  Encyclopedia  Bri- 
tannica  or  the  Hon.  Carroll  D.  Wright,  Com- 
missioner of  Statistics,  or  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox. 

I  admitted  that  in  reading  dictionaries,  stat- 
istics, or  mere  poets  or  mere  scientists  it  was 
necessary  to  have  a  purpose  to  fall  back  upon 
to  justify  one's  self.  And  there  was  no  deny- 
ing that  reading  for  results  was  a  necessary  and 
natural  thing.  The  trouble  seemed  to  be,  that 
very  few  people  could  be  depended  on  to  pick 
out  the  right  results.  Most  people  cannot  be 
depended  upon  to  pick  out  even  the  right  di- 
rections in  reading  a  great  book.  It  has  to  be 
left  to  the  author.  It  could  be  categorically 
proved  that  the  best  results  in  this  world,  either 
in  books  or  in  life,  had  never  been  attained  by 
men  who  always  insisted  on  doing  their  own 
steering.  The  special  purpose  of  a  great  book 


Ube 

Slanfe 

paper 

frame  of 


334 


%ost  art  of  IReaoino 


tlbe 

"Usefully 


is  that  a  man  can  stop  steering  in  it,  that  one 
can  give  one's  self  up  to  the  undertow,  to  the 
cross-current  in  it.  One  feels  one's  self  swept 
out  into  the  great  struggling  human  stream 
that  flows  under  life.  One  comes  to  truths  and 
delights  at  last  that  no  man,  though  he  had  a 
thousand  lives,  could  steer  to.  Most  of  us  are 
not  clear-headed  or  far-sighted  enough  to  pick 
out  purposes  or  results  in  reading.  We  are 
always  forgetting  how  great  we  are.  We  do 
not  pick  out  results — and  could  not  if  we  tried 
— that  are  big  enough. 

II 

Gbe  Tflsefullp  Tltnffnisbeb 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  remarked  that  he  thought 
there  was  such  a  thing  as  having  purposes  in 
reading  that  were  too  big.  It  seemed  to  him 
that  a  man  who  spent  nearly  all  his  strength 
when  he  was  reading  a  book,  in  trying  to  use  it 
to  swallow  a  universe  with,  must  find  it  mono- 
tonous. He  said  he  had  tried  reading  a  great 
book  without  any  purpose  whatever  except  its 
tangents  or  suggestions,  and  he  claimed  that 
when  he  read  a  great  book  in  that  way  —  the 
average  great  book  —  the  monotone  of  innu- 
merable possibility  wore  on  him.  He  wanted 
to  feel  that  a  book  was  coming  to  something, 
and  if  he  could  n't  feel  in  reading  it  that  the 
book  was  coming  to  something  he  wanted  to 


TIbe 


THufinfsbe& 


335 


feel  at  least  that  he  was.  He  did  not  say  it  in 
so  many  words,  but  he  admitted  he  did  not 
care  very  much  in  reading  for  what  I  had 
spoken  of  as  a  "  stream  of  consciousness. ' '  He 
wanted  a  nozzle  on  it. 

I  asked  him  at  this  point  how  he  felt  in  read- 
ing certain  classics.  I  brought  out  quite  a  nice 
little  list  of  them,  but  I  could  n't  track  him 
down  to  a  single  feeling  he  had  thought  of — 
had  had  to  think  of,  all  by  himself,  on  a  classic. 
I  found  he  had  all  the  proper  feelings  about 
them  and  a  lot  of  well-regulated  qualifications 
besides.  He  was  on  his  guard.  Finally  I 
asked  him  if  he  had  read  (I  am  not  going  to 
get  into  trouble  by  naming  it)  a  certain  con- 
temporary novel  under  discussion. 

He  said  he  had  read  it.  ' '  Great  deal  of 
power  in  it,"  he  said.  "  But  it  does  n't  come 
to  anything.  I  do  not  see  any  possible  artistic 
sense,"  he  said,  "  in  ending  a  novel  like  that. 
It  does  n't  bring  one  anywhere." 

"  Neither  does  one  of  Keats' s  poems,"  I  said, 
"or  Beethoven's  Ninth  Symphony.  The  odour 
of  a  rose  does  n't  come  to  anything — bring  one 
anywhere.  It  would  be  hard  to  tell  what  one 
really  gets  out  of  the  taste  of  roast  beef.  The 
sound  of  the  surf  on  the  Atlantic  does  n't  come 
to  anything,  but  hundreds  of  people  travel  a 
long  way  and  live  in  one-windowed  rooms  and 
rock  in  somebody  else's  bedroom  rocker,  to 
hear  it,  year  after  year.  Millions  of  dollars  are 
spent  in  Europe  to  look  at  pictures,  but  if  a 


tTbe 

Usefully 


336 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaotng 


TTbe 

sefu 
•Unfinisbes 


man  can  tell  what  it  is  he  gets  out  of  a  picture 
in  so  many  words  there  is  something  very 
wrong  with  the  picture." 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  gave  an  impatient  wave 
of  his  hand.  (To  be  strictly  accurate,  he  gave 
it  in  the  middle  of  the  last  paragraph,  just  be- 
fore we  came  to  the  Atlantic.  The  rest  is  Con- 
gressional Record.)  And  after  he  had  given 
the  impatient  wave  of  his  hand  he  looked  hurt. 
I  accordingly  drew  him  out.  He  was  still 
brooding  on  that  novel.  He  did  n't  approve  of 
the  heroine. 

"  What  was  the  matter  ?  "  I  said;  "dying  in 
the  last  chapter  ?  "  (It  is  one  of  those  novels 
in  which  the  heroine  takes  the  liberty  of  dying, 
in  a  mere  paragraph,  at  the  end,  and  in  what 
always  has  seemed  and  always  will,  to  some 
people,  a  rather  unsatisfactory  and  unfinished 
manner.) 

"  The  moral  and  spiritual  issues  of  a  book 
ought  to  be — well,  things  are  all  mixed  up. 
She  dies  indefinitely." 

"Most  women  do,"  I  said.  I  asked  him 
how  many  funerals  of  women  —  wives  and 
mothers — he  had  been  to  in  the  course  of  his 
life  where  he  could  sit  down  and  really  think 
that  they  had  died  to  the  point — the  way  they 
do  in  novels.  I  did  n't  see  why  people  should 
be  required  by  critics  and  other  authorities,  to 
die  to  the  point  in  a  book  more  than  anywhere 
else.  It  is  this  shallow,  reckless  way  that 
readers  have  of  wanting  to  have  everything 


ZTbe  Illsefullg  THnfinfsbe& 


337 


pleasant  and  appropriate  when  people  die  in 
novels  which  makes  writing  a  novel  nowadays 
as  much  as  a  man's  reputation  is  worth. 

The  P.  G.  S.  of  M.  explained  that  it  was  n't 
exactly  the  way  she  died  but  it  was  the  way 
everything  was  left — left  to  the  imagination. 

I  said  I  was  sorry  for  any  human  being  who 
had  lived  in  a  world  like  this  who  did  n't  leave 
a  good  deal  to  the  imagination  when  he  died. 
The  dullest,  most  uninteresting  man  that  any 
one  can  ever  know  becomes  interesting  in  his 
death.  One  walks  softly  down  the  years  of  his 
life,  peering  through  them.  One  cannot  help 
loving  him  a  little — stealthily.  One  goes  out 
a  little  way  with  him  on  his  long  journey — 
feels  bound  in  with  him  at  last — actually  bound 
in  with  him  (it  is  like  a  promise)  for  ever.  The 
more  one  knows  about  people's  lives  in  this 
world,  the  more  indefinitely,  the  more  irrele- 
vantly,— sometimes  almost  comically,  or  as  a 
kind  of  an  aside,  or  a  bit  of  repartee, — they  end 
them.  Suddenly,  sometimes  while  we  laugh 
or  look,  they  turn  upon  us,  fling  their  souls 
upon  the  invisible,  and  are  gone.  It  is  like  a 
last  wistful  haunting  pleasantry — death  is — 
from  some  of  us,  a  kind  of  bravado  in  it — as 
one  would  say,  "Oh,  well,  dying  is  really  after 
all — having  been  allowed  one  look  at  a  world 
like  this — a  small  matter." 

It  is  true  that  most  people  in  most  novels, 
never  having  been  born,  do  not  really  need  to 
die  —  that  is,  if  they  are  logical, — and  they 


Ube 
"Useful  IB 

•Unfinisbet) 


2Lost  art  of  IReaotng 


ttbe 

eful 

tin  finis  bcli 


might  as  well  die  to  the  point  or  as  the  reader 
likes  as  in  any  other  way,  but  if  there  is  one 
sign  rather  than  another  that  a  novel  belongs 
to  the  first  class,  it  is  that  the  novelist  claims 
all  the  privileges  of  the  stage  of  the  world  in  it. 
He  refuses  to  write  a  little  parlour  of  a  book 
and  he  sees  that  his  people  die  the  way  they 
live,  leaving  as  much  left  over  to  the  imagina- 
tion as  they  know  how. 

That  there  are  many  reasons  for  the  habit  of 
reading  for  results,  as  it  is  called,  goes  without 
saying.  It  also  goes  without  saying — that  is, 
no  one  is  saying  very  much  about  it — that  the 
habit  of  reading  for  results,  such  as  it  is,  has 
taken  such  a  grim  hold  on  the  modern  Ameri- 
can mind  that  the  greatest  result  of  all  in  read- 
ing, the  result  in  a  book  that  cannot  be  spoken 
in  it,  or  even  out  of  it,  is  being  unanimously 
missed. 

The  fact  seems  to  need  to  be  emphasised  that 
the  novel  which  gives  itself  to  one  to  be 
breathed  and  lived,  the  novel  which  leaves  a 
man  with  something  that  he  must  finish  him- 
self, with  something  he  must  do  and  be,  is  the 
one  which  "  gets  a  man  somewhere"  most  of 
all.  It  is  the  one  which  ends  the  most  defi- 
nitely and  practically. 

When  a  novel,  instead  of  being  hewn  out, 
finished,  and  decorated  by  the  author, — added 
as  one  more  monument  or  tomb  of  itself  in  a 
man's  memory, — becomes  a  growing,  living 
daily  thing  to  him,  the  wondering,  unfinished 


TUntliusbeD 


339 


events  of  it,  and  the  unfinished  people  of  it, 
flocking  out  to  him,  interpreting  for  him  the 
still  unfinished  events  and  all  the  dear  un- 
finished people  that  jostle  in  his  own  life, — it 
is  a  great  novel. 

It  seems  to  need  to  be  recalled  that  the  one 
possible  object  of  a  human  being's  life  in  a 
novel  (as  out  of  it)  is  to  be  loved.  This  is 
definite  enough.  It  is  the  novel  in  which  the 
heroine  looks  finished  that  does  not  come  to 
anything.  I  always  feel  a  little  grieved  and 
frustrated — as  if  human  nature  had  been  blas- 
phemed a  little  in  my  presence — if  a  novel  fin- 
ishes its  people  or  thinks  it  can.  It  is  a  small 
novel  which  finishes  love  —  and  lays  it  away ; 
which  makes  me  love  say  one  brave  woman  or 
mother  in  a  book,  and  close  her  away  for  ever. 
The  greater  novel  makes  me  love  one  woman 
in  a  book  in  such  a  way  that  I  go  about 
through  all  the  world  seeking  for  her  —  know- 
ing and  loving  a  thousand  women  through 
her.  I  feel  the  secret  of  their  faces — through 
her  —  flickering  by  me  on  the  street.  This 
intangible  result,  this  eternal  flash  of  a  life 
upon  life  is  all  that  reading  is  for.  It  is  prac- 
tical because  it  is  eternal  and  cannot  be  wasted 
and  because  it  is  for  ever  to  the  point. 

Life  is  greater  than  art  and  art  is  great  only 
in  so  far  as  it  proves  that  life  is  greater  than 
art,  interprets  and  intensifies  life  and  the  power 
to  taste  life — makes  us  live  wider  and  deeper 
and  farther  in  our  seventy  years. 


Ubc 
TOeefuII? 


340 


Xost  Hrt  of 


Ill 
HtMetics 

' '  The  world  is  full, ' '  Ellery  Channing  used  to 
say,  ' '  of  fools  who  get  a-going  and  never  stop. 
Set  them  off  on  another  tack,  and  they  are 
half-cured."  There  are  grave  reasons  to  be- 
lieve that,  if  an  archangel  were  to  come  to  this 
earth  and  select  a  profession  on  it,  instead  of 
taking  up  some  splendid,  serious,  dignified  call- 
ing he  would  devote  himself  to  a  comparatively 
small  and  humble-looking  career — that  of  jog- 
ging people's  minds.  This  might  not  seem  at 
first  sight  to  be  a  sufficiently  large  thing  for 
an  archangel  to  do,  but  if  it  were  to  be  done  at 
all  (those  who  have  tried  it  think)  it  would 
take  an  archangel  to  do  it. 

The  only  possible  practical  or  businesslike 
substitute  one  can  think  of  in  modern  life  for 
an  archangel  would  have  to  be  an  Institution 
of  some  kind.  Some  huge,  pleasant  Mutual 
Association  for  Jogging  People's  Minds  might 
do  a  little  something  perhaps,  but  it  would  not 
be  very  thorough.  The  people  who  need  it 
most,  half  or  three-quarters  of  them,  the  tread- 
mill-conscientious, dear,  rutty,  people  of  this 
world,  would  not  be  touched  by  it.  What  is 
really  wanted,  if  anything  is  really  to  be  done 
in  the  way  of  jogging,  is  a  new  day  in  the 
week. 

I  have  always  thought  that  there  ought  to 


Btblettcs 


341 


be  a  day,  one  day  in  the  week,  to  do  wrong  in 
— not  very  wrong,  but  wrong  enough  to  answer 
the  purpose — a  perfectly  irresponsible,  delect- 
able, inconsequent  day — a  sabbath  of  whims. 
There  ought  to  be  a  sort  of  sabbath  for  things 
that  never  get  done  because  they  are  too  good 
or  not  good  enough.  Letters  that  ought  to  be 
postponed  until  others  are  written,  letters  to 
friends  that  never  dun,  books  that  don't  bear 
on  anything,  books  that  no  one  has  asked  one 
to  read,  calls  on  unexpecting  people,  bills  that 
might  just  as  well  wait,  tinkering  around  the 
house  on  the  wrong  things,  the  right  ones,  per- 
fectly helpless,  standing  by.  Sitting  with  one's 
feet  a  little  too  high  (if  possible  on  one's  work- 
ing desk),  being  a  little  foolish  and  liking  it — 
making  poor  puns,  enjoying  one's  bad  gram- 
mar— a  day,  in  short,  in  which,  whatever  a 
man  is,  he  rests  from  himself  and  play  marbles 
with  his  soul. 

Most  people  nowadays — at  least  the  intel- 
lectual, so-called,  and  the  learned  above  all 
others — are  so  far  gone  under  the  reading-for- 
results  theory  that  they  have  become  mere 
work-worshippers  in  books,  worshippers  of 
work  which  would  not  need  to  be  performed  at 
all — most  of  it — by  men  with  healthy  natural 
or  fully  exercised  spiritual  organs.  One  very 
seldom  catches  a  man  in  the  act  nowadays  of 
doing  any  old-fashioned  or  important  reading. 
The  old  idea  of  reading  for  athletics  instead  of 
scientifics  has  almost  no  provision  made  for  it 


mtbletica 


342 


OLost  Brt  of  TReaoina 


athletics  in  the  modern  intellectual  man's  life.  He 
does  not  seem  to  know  what  it  is  to  take  his 
rest  like  a  gentleman.  He  lunges  between  all- 
science  and  all-vaudeville,  and  plays  in  his 
way,  it  is  true,  but  he  never  plays  with  his 
mind.  He  never  takes  playing  with  a  mind 
seriously,  as  one  of  the  great  standard  joys  and 
powers  and  equipments  of  human  life.  He 
does  not  seem  to  love  his  mind  enough  to  play 
with  it.  Above  all,  he  does  not  see  that  play- 
ing with  a  mind  (on  great  subjects,  at  least)  is 
the  only  possible  way  to  make  it  work.  He 
entirely  overlooks  the  fact,  in  his  little  round 
of  reading  for  results,  that  the  main  thing  a 
book  is  in  a  man's  hands  for  is  the  man — that 
it  is  there  to  lift  him  over  into  a  state  of 
being,  a  power  of  action.  A  man  who  really 
reads  a  book  and  reads  it  well,  reads  it  for 
moral  muscle,  spiritual  skill,  for  far-sighted- 
ness, for  catholicity — above  all  for  a  kind  of 
limberness  and  suppleness,  a  swift  sure  strength 
through  his  whole  being.  He  faces  the  world 
with  a  new  face  when  he  has  truly  read  a  true 
book,  and  as  a  bridegroom  coming  out  of  his 
chamber,  he  rejoices  as  a  strong  man  to  run  a 
race. 

As  between  reading  to  heighten  one's  senses, 
one's  suggestibility,  power  of  knowing  and 
combining  facts,  the  multum-in-parvo  method 
in  reading,  and  the  paruum-in-multo  method, 
a  dogged,  accumulating,  impotent,  callous 
reading  for  results,  it  is  not  hard  to  say  which, 


Btbletics 

in  the  equipment  of  the  modern  scientist,  is 
being  overlooked. 

It  is  doubtless  true,  the  common  saying  of 
the  man  of  genius  in  every  age,  that  ' '  every- 
thing is  grist  to  his  mill, ' '  but  it  would  not  be 
if  he  could  not  grind  it  fine  enough.  And  he 
is  only  able  to  grind  it  fine  enough  because  he 
makes  his  reading  bring  him  power  as  well  as 
grist.  Having  provided  for  energy,  stored- up 
energy  for  grinding,  he  guards  and  preserves 
that  energy  as  the  most  important  and  culmi- 
nating thing  in  his  intellectual  life.  He  insists 
on  making  provision  for  it.  He  makes  ready 
solitude  for  it,  blankness,  reverie,  sleep,  silence. 
He  cultivates  the  general  habit  not  only  of  re- 
jecting things,  but  of  keeping  out  of  their  way 
when  necessary,  so  as  not  to  have  to  reject 
them,  and  he  knows  the  passion  in  all  times 
and  all  places  for  grinding  grist  finer  instead 
of  gathering  more  grist.  These  are  going  to 
be  the  traits  of  all  the  mighty  reading,  the 
reading  that  achieves,  in  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury. The  saying  of  the  man  of  genius  that 
everything  is  grist  to  his  mill  merely  means 
that  he  reads  a  book  athletically,  with  a  mag- 
nificent play  of  power  across  it,  with  an  heroic 
imagination  or  power  of  putting  together.  He 
turns  everything  that  comes  to  him  over  into 
its  place  and  force  and  meaning  in  everything 
else.  He  reads  slowly  and  organically  where 
others  read  with  their  eyes.  He  knows  what 
it  is  to  tingle  with  a  book,  to  blush  and  turn 


343 


Btblctics 


344 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaoing 


Htbietic0  pale  with  it,  to  read  his  feet  cold.  He  reads 
all  over,  with  his  nerves  and  senses,  with  his 
niind  and  heart.  He  reads  through  the  whole 
tract  of  his  digestive  and  assimilative  nature. 
To  borrow  the  Hebrew  figure,  he  reads  with 
his  bowels.  Instead  of  reading  to  maintain  a 
theory,  or  a  row  of  facts,  he  reads  to  sustain  a 
certain  state  of  being.  The  man  who  has  the 
knack,  as  some  people  seem  to  think  it,  of 
making  everything  he  reads  and  sees  beauti- 
ful or  vigorous  and  practical,  does  not  need 
to  try  to  do  it.  He  does  it  because  he  has 
a  habit  of  putting  himself  in  a  certain  state 
of  being  and  cannot  help  doing  it.  He  does 
not  need  to  spend  a  great  deal  of  time  in  read- 
ing for  results.  He  produces  his  own  results. 
The  less  athletic  reader,  the  smaller  poet  or 
scientist,  confines  himself  to  reading  for  results, 
for  ready-made  beauty  and  ready-made  facts, 
because  he  is  not  in  condition  to  do  anything 
else.  The  greater  poet  or  scientist  is  an  energy, 
a  transfigurer,  a  transmuter  of  everything  into 
beauty  and  truth.  Everything  having  passed 
through  the  heat  and  light  of  his  own  being 
is  fused  and  seen  where  it  belongs,  where  God 
placed  it  when  He  made  it,  in  some  relation  to 
everything  else. 

I  fear  that  I  may  have  come,  in  bearing 
down  on  this  point,  to  another  of  the  of-course 
places  in  this  book.  It  is  not  just  to  assume 
that  because  people  are  not  living  with  a  truth 
that  they  need  to  be  told  it.  It  is  of  little  use, 


Btbletics 


345 


when  a  man  has  used  his  truth  all  up  boring 
people  with  it,  to  try  to  get  them  (what  is  left 
of  the  truth  and  the  people)  to  do  anything 
about  it.  But  if  I  may  be  allowed  one  page 
more  I  would  like  to  say  in  the  present  epi- 
demic of  educating  for  results,  just  what  a 
practical  education  may  be  said  to  be. 

The  indications  are  that  the  more  a  man 
spends,  makes  himself  able  to  spend,  a  large 
part  of  his  time,  as  Whitman  did,  in  standing 
still  and  looking  around  and  loving  things,  the 
more  practical  he  is.  Even  if  a  man's  life  were 
to  serve  as  a  mere  guide-board  to  the  universe, 
it  would  supply  to  all  who  know  him  the  main 
thing  the  universe  seems  to  be  without.  But 
a  man  who,  like  Walt  Whitman,  is  more  than 
a  guide-board  to  the  universe,  who  deliberately 
takes  time  to  live  in  the  whole  of  it,  who  be- 
comes a  part  of  the  universe  to  all  who  live 
always,  who  makes  the  universe  human  to  us 
— companionable, — such  a  man  may  not  be  able 
to  fix  a  latch  on  a  kitchen  door,  but  I  can  only 
say  for  one  that  if  there  is  a  man  who  can  lift 
a  universe  bodily,  and  set  it  down  in  my  front 
yard  where  I  can  feel  it  helping  me  do  my 
work  all  day  and  guarding  my  sleep  at  night, 
that  man  is  practical.  Who  can  say  he  does 
not  "come  to  anything  "  ?  To  have  heard  it 
rumoured  that  such  a  man  has  lived,  can  live, 
is  a  result  —  the  most  practical  result  of  all  to 
most  of  the  workers  of  the  world.  A  bare  fact 
about  such  a  man  is  a  gospel.  Why  work  for 


Iltblctfcs 


346 


Xost  Brt  of  TReaoing 


Htbietics  nothing  (that  is,  with  no  result)  in  a  universe 
where  you  can  play  for  nothing — and  by  play- 
ing earn  everything  ? 

Such  a  man  is  not  only  practical,  serving 
those  who  know  him  by  merely  being,  but  he 
serves  all  men  always.  They  will  not  let  him 
go.  He  becomes  a  part  of  the  structure  of  the 
world.  The  generations  keep  flocking  to  him 
the  way  they  flock  to  the  great  sane  silent 
ministries  of  the  sky  and  of  the  earth.  Their 
being  drawn  to  them  is  their  being  drawn  to 
him.  The  strength  of  clouds  is  in  him,  and 
the  spirit  of  falling  water,  and  he  knoweth  the 
way  of  the  wind.  When  a  man  can  be  said  by 
the  way  he  lives  his  life  to  have  made  himself 
the  companion  of  his  unborn  brothers  and  of 
God;  when  he  can  be  said  to  have  made  him- 
self, not  a  mere  scientist,  but  a  younger  brother, 
a  real  companion  of  air,  water,  fire,  mist,  and 
of  the  great  gentle  ground  beneath  his  feet — he 
has  secured  a  result. 


VI — Reading  for  Feelings 


passion  of  Grutb 


HADING  resolves  itself  sooner  or  later 
1  \     into  two  elements  in  the  reader's  mind: 

1.  Tables  of  facts,     (a)  Rows  of  raw  fact; 
(b)  Principles,  spiritual  or  sum-total  facts. 

2.  Feelings  about  the  facts. 

But  the  Man  with  the  Scientific  Method, 
who  lives  just  around  the  corner  from  me,  tells 
me  that  reading  for  feelings  is  quite  out  of  the 
question  for  a  scientific  mind.  It  is  foreign  to 
the  nature  of  knowledge  to  want  knowledge 
for  the  feelings  that  go  with  it.  Feelings  get 
in  the  way. 

I  find  it  impossible  not  to  admit  that  there 
is  a  certain  force  in  this,  but  I  notice  that  when 
the  average  small  scientist,  the  man  around 
the  corner,  for  instance,  says  to  me  what  he  is 


347 


•C  be 
passion  of 

Crutb 


348 


Xost  Hrt  ot 


Ube 
paselon  of 


always  saying,  "  Science  requires  the  elimina- 
tion of  feelings," — says  it  to  me  in  his  usual 
chilled-through,  ophidian,  infallible  way, — I 
never  believe  it,  or  at  least  I  believe  it  very 
softly  and  do  not  let  him  know  it.  But  when 
a  large  scientist,  a  man  like  Charles  Darwin, 
makes  a  statement  like  this,  I  believe  it  as  hard, 
I  notice,  as  if  I  had  made  it  all  up  myself. 
The  statement  that  science  requires  the  elim- 
ination of  the  feelings  is  true  or  not  true,  it 
seems  to  me,  according  to  the  size  of  the  feel- 
ings. Considering  what  most  men's  feelings 
are,  a  man  like  Darwin  feels  that  they  had 
better  be  eliminated.  If  a  man's  feelings  are 
small  feelings,  they  are  in  the  way  in  science, 
as  a  matter  of  course.  If  he  has  large  noble 
ones,  feelings  that  match  the  things  that  God 
has  made,  feelings  that  are  free  and  daring, 
beautiful  enough  to  belong  with  things  that  a 
God  has  made,  he  will  have  no  trouble  with 
them.  It  is  the  feelings  in  a  great  scientist 
which  have  always  fired  him  into  being  a  man 
of  genius  in  his  science,  instead  of  a  mere  tool, 
or  scoop,  or  human  dredge  of  truth.  All  the 
great  scientists  show  this  firing-process  down 
underneath,  in  their  work.  The  idea  that  it 
is  necessary  for  a  scientific  man  to  give  up  his 
human  ideal,  that  it  is  necessary  for  him  to  be 
officially  brutal,  in  his  relation  to  nature,  to 
become  a  professional  nobody  in  order  to  get 
at  truth,  to  make  himself  over  into  matter  in 
order  to  understand  matter,  has  not  had  a 


passion  of  TErutb 


349 


single  great  scientific  achievement  or  concep- 
tion to  its  credit.  All  great  insight  or  genius 
in  science  is  a  passion  of  itself,  a  passion  of 
worshipping  real  things.  Science  is  a  passion 
not  only  in  its  origin,  but  in  its  motive  power 
and  in  its  end.  The  real  truth  seems  to  be 
that  the  scientist  of  the  greater  sort  is  great, 
not  by  having  no  emotions,  but  by  having  dis- 
interested emotions,  by  being  large  enough  to 
have  emotions  on  both  sides  and  all  sides,  all 
held  in  subjection  to  the  final  emotion  of  truth. 
Having  a  disinterested,  fair  attitude  in  truth  is 
not  a  matter  of  having  no  passions,  but  of  hav- 
ing passions  enough  to  go  around.  The  tem- 
porary idea  that  a  scientist  cannot  be  scientific 
and  emotional  at  once  is  based  upon  the  ex- 
perience of  men  who  have  never  had  emotions 
enough.  Men  whose  emotions  are  slow  and 
weak,  who  have  one-sided  or  wavering  emo- 
tions, find  them  inconvenient  as  a  matter  of 
course.  The  men  who,  like  Charles  Darwin  or 
some  larger  Browning,  have  the  passion  of  dis- 
interestedness are  those  who  are  fitted  to  lead 
the  human  race,  who  are  going  to  lead  it  along 
the  paths  of  space  and  the  footsteps  of  the 
worlds  into  the  Great  Presence. 

The  greatest  astronomer  or  chemist  is  the 
man  who  glows  with  the  joy  of  wrestling  with 
God,  of  putting  strength  to  strength. 

To  the  geologist  who  goes  groping  about  in 
stones,  his  whole  life  is  a  kind  of  mind-reading 
of  the  ground,  a  passion  for  getting  underneath, 


ttbe 

pasefon  of 
Urutb 


35° 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaoing 


tTbe 

passion  of 
Ucutb 


for  communing  flesh  to  flesh  with  a  planet. 
What  he  feels  when  he  breaks  a  bit  of  rock  is 
the  whole  round  earth — the  wonder  of  it — the 
great  cinder  floating  through  space.  He  would 
all  but  risk  his  life  or  sell  his  soul  for  a  bit  of 
lava.  He  is  studying  the  phrenology  of  a  star. 
All  the  other  stars  watch  him.  The  feeling 
of  being  in  a  kind  of  eternal,  invisible,  infinite 
enterprise,  of  carrying  out  a  world,  of  tracking 
a  God,  takes  possession  of  him.  He  may  not 
admit  there  is  a  God,  in  so  many  words,  but 
his  geology  admits  it.  He  devotes  his  whole 
life  to  appreciating  a  God,  and  the  God  takes 
the  deed  for  the  word,  appreciates  his  apprecia- 
tion, whether  he  does  or  not.  If  he  says  that 
he  does  not  believe  in  a  God,  he  merely  means 
that  he  does  not  believe  in  Calvin's  God,  or  in 
the  present  dapper,  familiar  little  God  or  the 
hero  of  the  sermon  last  Sunday.  All  he  means 
by  not  believing  in  a  God  is  that  his  God  has 
not  been  represented  yet.  In  the  meantime 
he  and  his  geology  go  sternly,  implacably  on 
for  thousands  of  years,  while  churches  come 
and  go.  So  does  his  God.  His  geology  is  his 
own  ineradicable  worship.  His  religion,  his 
passion  for  the  all,  for  communing  through  the 
part  with  the  Whole,  is  merely  called  by  the 
name  of  geology.  In  so  far  as  a  man's  geology 
is  real  to  him,  if  he  is  after  anything  but  a  de- 
gree in  it,  or  a  thesis  or  a  salary,  his  geology 
is  an  infinite  passion  taking  possession  of  him, 
soul  and  body,  carrying  him  along  with  it, 


ipassion  of  Urutb 


351 


sweeping  him  out  with  it  into  the  great  work- 
room, the  flame  and  the  glow  of  the  world- 
shop  of  God. 

It  would  not  seem  necessary  to  say  it  if  it 
were  not  so  stoutly  denied,  but  living  as  we  do, 
most  of  us,  with  a  great  flock  of  little  scientists 
around  us,  pecking  on  the  infinite  most  of 
them,  each  with  his  own  little  private  strut,  or 
blasphemy,  bragging  of  a  world  without  a 
God,  it  does  seem  as  if  it  were  going  to  be  the 
great  strategic  event  of  the  twentieth  century, 
for  all  men,  to  get  the  sciences  and  the  hu- 
manities together  once  more,  if  only  in  our 
own  thoughts,  to  make  ourselves  believe  as  we 
must  believe,  after  all,  that  it  is  humanity  in  a 
scientist,  and  not  a  kind  of  professional  inhu- 
manity in  him,  which  makes  him  a  scientist  in 
the  great  sense — a  seer  of  matter.  The  great 
scientist  is  a  man  who  communes  with  matter, 
not  around  his  human  spirit,  but  through  it. 

The  small  scientist,  violating  nature  inside 
himself  to  understand  it  outside  himself,  misses 
the  point. 

At  all  events  if  a  man  who  has  locked  himself 
out  of  his  own  soul  goes  around  the  world  and 
cannot  find  God's  in  it,  he  does  not  prove  any- 
thing. The  man  who  finds  a  God  proves  quite 
as  much.  And  he  has  his  God  besides. 


-Cbe 

passion  of 

Urutb 


35  2 


%ost  art  ot 


Ube  UopU 
cal  point 
of  View 


II 
tropical  point  of  IDiew 


If  it  is  true  that  reading  resolves  itself  sooner 
or  later  into  two  elements  in  the  reader's  mind, 
tables  of  facts  and  feelings  about  the  facts,  that 
is,  rows  of  raw  fact,  and  spiritualised  or  related 
facts,  several  things  follow.  The  most  im- 
portant of  them  is  one's  definition  of  education. 
The  man  who  can  get  the  greatest  amount  of 
feeling  out  of  the  smallest  number  and  the 
greatest  variety  of  facts  is  the  greatest  and 
most  educated  man — comes  nearest  to  living  an 
infinite  life.  The  purpose  of  education  in 
books  would  seem  to  be  to  make  every  man  as 
near  to  this  great  or  semi-infinite  man  as  he 
can  be  made. 

If  men  were  capable  of  becoming  infinite  by 
sitting  in  a  library  long  enough,  the  education - 
problem  would  soon  take  care  of  itself.  There 
is  no  front  or  side  door  to  the  infinite.  It  is  all 
doors.  And  if  the  mere  taking  time  enough 
would  do  it,  one  could  read  one's  way  into  the 
infinite  as  easily  as  if  it  were  anything  else. 
One  can  hardly  miss  it.  One  could  begin  any- 
where. There  would  be  nothing  to  do  but  to 
proceed  at  once  to  read  all  the  facts  and  have 
all  the  feelings  about  the  facts  and  enjoy  them 
forever.  The  main  difficulty  one  comes  to, 
in  being  infinite,  is  that  there  is  not  time,  but 
inasmuch  as  great  men  or  semi-infinite  men 


TIbe  TToplcal  point  of  IDiew 


353 


have  all  had  to  contend  with  this  same  diffi- 
culty quite  as  much  as  the  rest  of  us,  it  would 
seem  that  in  getting  as  many  of  the  infinite 
facts,  and  having  as  many  infinite  feelings 
about  the  facts,  as  they  do,  great  men  must 
employ  some  principle  of  economy  or  selection, 
that  common,  that  is,  artificial  men,  are  apt  to 
overlook. 

There  seem  to  be  two  main  principles  of 
economy  open  to  great  men  and  to  all  of  us,  in 
the  acquiring  of  knowledge.  One  of  these,  as 
has  been  suggested,  may  be  called  the  scien- 
tist's principle  of  economy,  and  the  other  the 
poet's  or  artist's.  The  main  difference  be- 
tween the  scientific  and  the  artistic  method  of 
selection  seems  to  be  that  the  scientist  does  his 
selecting  all  at  once  and  when  he  selects  his 
career,  and  the  artist  makes  selecting  the  en- 
tire business  of  every  moment  of  his  life.  The 
scientist  of  the  average  sort  begins  by  partition- 
ing the  universe  off  into  topics.  Having  se- 
lected his  topic  and  walled  himself  in  with  it, 
he  develops  it  by  walling  the  rest  of  the  uni- 
verse out.  The  poet  (who  is  almost  always  a 
specialist  also,  a  special  kind  of  poet),  having 
selected  his  specialty,  develops  it  by  letting  all 
the  universe  in.  He  spends  his  time  in  making 
his  life  a  cross  section  of  the  universe.  The 
spirit  of  the  whole  of  it,  something  of  every- 
thing in  it,  is  represented  in  everything  he  does. 
Whatever  his  specialty  may  be  in  poetry, 
painting,  or  literature,  he  produces  an  eternal 


Cbc  lEopi- 
cal  point 
of  View 


354 


Xost  Hrt  of 


TIbe  TTopU 
cal  point 
of  View 


result  by  massing  the  infinite  and  eternal  into 
the  result.  He  succeeds  by  bringing  the  uni- 
verse to  a  point,  by  accumulating  out  of  all 
things  —  himself.  It  is  the  tendency  of  the 
scientist  to  produce  results  by  dividing  the 
universe  and  by  subdividing  himself.  Unless 
he  is  a  very  great  scientist  he  accepts  it  as  the 
logic  of  his  method  that  he  should  do  this. 
His  individual  results  are  small  results  and  he 
makes  himself  professedly  small  to  get  them. 

All  questions  with  regard  to  the  reading 
habit  narrow  themselves  down  at  last :  "Is 
the  Book  to  be  divided  for  the  Man,  or  is  the 
Man  to  be  divided  for  the  Book  ?  Shall  a  man 
so  read  as  to  lose  his  soul  in  a  subject,  or  shall 
he  so  read  that  the  subject  loses  itself  in  him — 
becomes  a  part  of  him?"  The  main  fact  about 
our  present  education  is  that  it  is  the  man 
who  is  getting  lost.  And  not  only  is  every 
man  getting  lost  to  himself,  but  all  men  are 
eagerly  engaged  in  getting  lost  to  each  other. 
The  dead  level  of  intelligence,  being  a  dead 
level  in  a  literal  sense,  is  a  spiritless  level — a 
mere  grading  down  and  grading  up  of  appear- 
ances. In  all  that  pertains  to  real  knowledge 
of  the  things  that  people  appear  to  know, 
greater  heights  and  depths  of  difference  in 
human  lives  are  revealed  to-day  than  in  almost 
any  age  of  the  world.  What  with  our  steam- 
engines  (machines  for  our  hands  and  feet)  and 
our  sciences  (machines  for  our  souls)  we  have 
arrived  at  such  an  extraordinary  division  of 


Ube  Tropical  ipoint  ot  IDiew 


355 


labour,  both  of  body  and  mind,  that  people  of 
the  same  classes  are  farther  apart  than  they 
used  to  be  in  different  classes.  Lawyers,  for 
instance,  are  as  different  from  one  another  as 
they  used  to  be  from  ministers  and  doctors. 
Every  new  skill  we  come  to  and  every  new 
subdivision  of  skill  marks  the  world  off  into 
pigeon-holes  of  existence,  into  huge,  hopeless, 
separate  divisions  of  humanity.  We  live  in 
different  elements,  monsters  of  the  sea  wonder- 
ing at  the  air,  air-monsters  peering  curiously 
down  into  the  sea,  sailors  on  surfaces,  trollers 
over  other  people's  worlds.  We  commune 
with  each  other  with  lines  and  hooks.  Some 
of  us  on  the  rim  of  the  earth  spend  all  our  days 
quarrelling  over  bits  of  the  crust  of  it.  Some 
of  us  burrow  and  live  in  the  ground,  and  are 
as  workers  in  mines.  The  sound  of  our  voices 
to  one  another  is  as  though  they  were  not. 
They  are  as  the  sound  of  picks  groping  in 
rocks. 

The  reason  that  we  are  not  able  to  produce 
or  even  to  read  a  great  literature  is  that  a 
great  book  can  never  be  written,  in  spirit  at 
least,  except  to  a  whole  human  race.  The 
final  question  with  regard  to  every  book  that 
comes  to  a  publisher  to-day  is  what  mine  shall 
it  be  written  in,  which  public  shall  it  burrow 
for  ?  A  book  that  belongs  to  a  whole  human 
race,  which  cannot  be  classified  or  damned 
into  smallness,  would  only  be  left  by  itself  on 
the  top  of  the  ground  in  the  sunlight.  The 


TTbe  UopU 
cal  point 
of  View 


356 


%ost  art  of 


cbc  Copis 

cal  point 

of  View 


next  great  book  that  comes  will  have  to  take  a 
long  trip,  a  kind  of  drummer's  route  around 
life,  from  mind  to  mind,  and  now  in  one 
place  and  now  another  be  let  down  through 
shafts  to  us.  There  is  no  whole  human  race. 
A  book  with  even  forty-man  power  in  it  goes 
begging  for  readers.  The  reader  with  more 
than  one-,  two-,  or  three-man  power  of  reading 
scarcely  exists.  We  shall  know  our  great 
book  when  it  comes  by  the  fact  that  crowds  of 
kinds  of  men  will  flock  to  the  paragraphs  in  it, 
each  kind  to  its  own  kind  of  paragraph.  It 
will  hardly  be  said  to  reach  us,  the  book  with 
forty-man  power  in  it,  until  it  has  been  broken 
up  into  fortieths  of  itself.  When  it  has  been 
written  over  again — broken  off  into  forty  books 
by  forty  men,  none  of  them  on  speaking  terms 
with  each  other — it  shall  be  recognised  in  some 
dim  way  that  it  must  have  been  a  great  book. 
It  is  the  first  law  of  culture,  in  the  highest 
sense,  that  it  always  begins  and  ends  with  the 
fact  that  a  man  is  a  man.  Teaching  the  fact 
to  a  man  that  he  can  be  a  greater  man  is  the 
shortest  and  most  practical  way  of  teaching 
him  other  facts.  It  is  only  by  being  a  greater 
man,  by  raising  his  state  of  being  to  the  nl]t 
power,  that  he  can  be  made  to  see  the  other 
facts.  The  main  attribute  of  the  education  of 
the  future,  in  so  far  as  it  obtains  to-day,  is  that 
it  strikes  both  ways.  It  strikes  in  and  makes 
a  man  mean  something,  and  having  made  the 
man  —  the  main  fact  —  mean  something,  it 


TEbe  topical  point  of  IDiew 


357 


strikes  out  through  the  man  and  makes  all 
other  facts  mean  something.  It  makes  new 
facts,  and  old  facts  as  good  as  new.  It  makes 
new  worlds.  All  attempts  to  make  a  whole 
world  without  a  single  whole  man  anywhere  to 
begin  one  out  of  are  vain  attempts.  We  are 
going  to  have  great  men  again  some  time,  but 
the  science  that  attempts  to  build  a  civilisation 
in  this  twentieth  century  by  subdividing  such 
men  as  we  already  have  mocks  at  itself.  The 
devil  is  not  a  specialist  and  never  will  be.  He 
is  merely  getting  everybody  else  to  be,  as  fast 
as  he  can. 

It  is  safe  to  say  in  this  present  hour  of  sub- 
divided men  and  sub-selected  careers  that  any 
young  man  who  shall  deliberately  set  out  at 
the  beginning  of  his  life  to  be  interested,  at 
any  expense  and  at  all  hazards,  in  everything, 
in  twenty  or  thirty  years  will  have  the  field 
entirely  to  himself.  It  is  true  that  he  will 
have  to  run,  what  every  more  vital  man  has 
had  to  run,  the  supreme  risk,  the  risk  of  being 
either  a  fool  or  a  seer,  a  fool  if  he  scatters  him- 
self into  everything,  a  seer  if  he  masses  every- 
thing into  himself.  But  when  he  succeeds  at 
last  he  will  find  that  for  all  practical  purposes, 
as  things  are  going  to-day,  he  will  have  a 
monopoly  of  the  universe,  of  the  greatest  force 
there  is  in  it,  the  combining  and  melting  and 
fusing  force  that  brings  all  men  and  all  ideas 
together,  making  the  race  one — a  force  which 
is  the  chief  characteristic  of  every  great  period 


Ube  TTopU 
cal  point 
of  View 


358 


%ost  Hrt  of  1ReaMn0 


Ube  Uopi- 
cal  point 
of  View 


and  of  every  great  character  that  history  has 
known. 

It  is  obvious  that  whatever  may  be  its 
dangers,  the  topical  or  scientific  point  of  view 
in  knowledge  is  one  that  the  human  race  is  not 
going  to  get  along  without,  if  it  is  to  be  master 
of  the  House  it  lives  in.  It  is  also  obvious 
that  the  human  or  artistic,  the  man-point  of 
view  in  knowledge  is  one  that  it  is  not  going 
to  get  along  without,  if  the  House  is  to  con- 
tinue to  have  Men  in  it. 

The  question  remains,  the  topical  point  of 
view  and  the  artistic  point  of  view  both  being 
necessary,  how  shall  a  man  contrive  in  the 
present  crowding  of  the  world  to  read  with 
both  ?  Is  there  any  principle  in  reading  that 
fuses  them  both  ?  And  if  there  is,  what  is  it  ? 


VII— Reading  the  World 
Together 


359 


HPHERE  are  only  a  few  square  inches — of 
1  cells  and  things,  no  one  quite  knows 
what — on  a  human  face,  but  a  man  can  see 
more  of  the  world  in  those  few  inches,  and 
understand  more  of  the  meaning  of  the  world 
in  them,  put  the  world  together  better  there, 
than  in  any  other  few  inches  that  God  has 
made.  Even  one  or  two  faces  do  it,  for  a 
man,  for  most  of  us,  when  we  have  seen  them 
through  and  through.  Not  a  face  anywhere 
— no  one  has  ever  seen  one  that  was  not  a 
mirror  of  a  whole  world,  a  poor  and  twisted  one 
perhaps,  but  a  great  one.  The  man  that  goes 
with  it  may  not  know  it,  may  not  have  much 


focusing 


36° 


%ost  Hrt  ot 


focusing  to  do  with  it.  While  he  is  waiting  to  die,  God 
writes  on  him;  but  however  it  is,  every  man's 
face  (I  cannot  help  feeling  it  when  I  really  look 
at  it)  is  helplessly  great.  It  is  one  man's  por- 
trait of  the  universe  as  he  has  found  it — his 
portrait  of  a  Whole.  I  have  caught  myself 
looking  at  crowds  of  faces  as  if  they  were  rows 
of  worlds.  Is  not  everything  I  can  know  or 
guess  or  cry  or  sing  written  on  faces?  An 
audience  is  a  kind  of  universe  by  itself.  I 
could  pray  to  one  —  when  once  the  soul  is 
hushed  before  it.  If  there  were  any  necessity 
to  select  one  place  rather  than  another,  any 
particular  place  to  address  a  God  in,  I  think  I 
would  choose  an  audience.  Praying  for  it  in- 
stead of  to  it  is  a  mere  matter  of  form.  I  can- 
not find  a  face  in  it  that  does  not  lead  to  a  God, 
that  does  not  gather  a  God  in  for  me  out  of  all 
space,  that  is  not  one  of  His  assembling  places. 
Many  and  man}'  a  time  when  heads  were  being 
bowed  have  I  caught  a  face  in  a  congregation 
and  prayed  to  it  and  with  it.  Every  man's  face 
is  a  kind  of  prayer  he  carries  around  with  him. 
One  can  hardly  help  joining  in  it.  It  is 
sacrament  to  look  at  his  face,  if  only  to  take 
sides  in  it,  join  with  the  God-self  in  it  and 
help  against  the  others.  Whoever  or  What- 
ever He  is,  up  there  across  all  heaven,  He  is  a 
God  to  me  because  He  can  be  infinitely  small 
or  infinitely  great  as  He  likes.  I  will  not  have 
a  God  that  can  be  shut  up  into  any  horizon  or 
shut  out  of  any  face.  When  I  have  stood  be- 


focusing 


361 


fore  audiences,  have  really  realised  faces,  felt 
the  still  and  awful  thronging  of  them  through 
my  soul,  it  has  seemed  to  me  as  if  some  great 
miracle  were  happening.  It  's  as  if — but  who 
shall  say  it? — Have  you  never  stood,  Gentle 
Reader,  alone  at  night  on  the  frail  rim  of  the 
earth— spread  your  heart  out  wide  upon  the 
dark,  and  let  it  lie  there, — let  it  be  flocked  on 
by  stars  ?  It  is  like  that  when  Something  is 
lifted  and  one  sees  faces.  Faces  are  worlds  to 
me.  However  hard  I  try,  I  cannot  get  a  man, 
somehow,  any  smaller  than  a  world.  He  is  a 
world  to  himself,  and  God  helping  me,  when  I 
deal  with  him,  he  shall  be  a  world  to  me.  The 
dignity  of  a  world  rests  upon  him.  His  face 
is  a  sum-total  of  the  universe.  It  is  made  by 
the  passing  of  the  infinite  through  his  body. 
It  is  the  mark  of  all  things  that  are,  upon  his 
flesh. 

What  I  like  to  believe  is,  that  if  there  is  an 
organic  principle  of  unity  like  this  in  a  little 
human  life,  if  there  is  some  way  of  summing 
up  a  universe  in  a  man's  face,  there  must  be 
some  way  of  summing  it  up,  of  putting  it  to- 
gether in  his  education.  It  is  this  summing  a 
universe  up  for  one's  self,  and  putting  it  to- 
gether for  one's  self,  and  for  one's  own  use, 
which  makes  an  education  in  a  universe  worth 
while. 

In  other  words,  with  a  symbol  as  convenient, 
as  near  to  him  as  his  own  face,  a  man  need  not 
go  far  in  seeking  for  a  principle  of  unity  in 


ffocuefng 


362 


%ost  Hrt  of  IReaoina 


focusing  education.  A  mail's  face  makes  it  seem  not 
unreasonable  to  claim  that  the  principle  of 
unity  in  all  education  is  the  man,  that  the 
single  human  soul  is  created  to  be  its  own 
dome  of  all  knowledge.  A  man's  education 
may  be  said  to  be  properly  laid  out  in  propor- 
tion as  it  is  laid  out  the  way  he  lays  out  his 
countenance.  The  method  or  process  by  which 
a  man's  countenance  is  laid  out  is  a  kind  of 
daily  organic  process  of  world-swallowing. 
What  a  man  undertakes  in  living  is  the  mak- 
ing over  of  all  phenomena,  outer  sights  and 
sounds  into  his  own  inner  ones,  the  passing  of 
all  outside  knowledge  through  himself.  In 
proportion  as  he  is  being  educated  he  is  mak- 
ing all  things  that  are,  into  his  own  flesh  and 
spirit. 

When  one  looks  at  it  in  this  way  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  every  man  is  a  world. 
He  makes  the  tiny  platform  of  his  soul  in  in- 
finite space,  a  stage  for  worlds  to  come  to,  to 
play  their  parts  on.  His  soul  is  a  little  All- 
show,  a  kind  of  dainty  pantomime  of  the  uni- 
verse. 

It  seemed  that  I  stood  and  watched  a  world 
awake,  the  great  night  still  upbearing  me 
above  the  flood  of  the  day.  I  watched  it 
strangely,  as  a  changed  being,  the  godlike- 
ness  and  the  might  of  sleep,  the  spell  of  the 
All  upon  me.  I  became  as  one  who  saw  the 
earth  as  it  is,  in  a  high  noon  of  its  real  self. 


JfOCUSfUQ 


363 


Hung  in  its  mist  of  worlds,  wrapped  in  its  own 
breath,  I  saw  it — a  queer  little  ball  of  cooled- 
off  fire,  it  seemed,  still  and  swift  plunging 
through  space.  And  when  I  looked  close  in 
my  heart,  I  saw  cunning  little  men  on  it,  na- 
tions and  things  running  around  on  it.  And 
when  I  looked  still  nearer,  looked  at  the 
lighted  side  of  it,  I  saw  that  each  little  man 
was  not  what  I  thought  —  a  dot  or  fleck  on 
the  universe.  And  I  saw  that  he  was  a  reflec- 
tion, a  serious,  wondrous  miniature  of  all  the 
rest.  It  all  seemed  strange  to  me  at  first — to 
a  man  who  lives,  as  I  do,  in  a  rather  weary, 
laborious,  painstaking  age — that  this  should 
be  so.  As  I  looked  at  the  little  man  I  won- 
dered if  it  really  could  be  so.  Then,  as  I 
looked,  the  great  light  flowed  all  around  the 
little  man,  and  the  little  man  reflected  the 
great  light. 

But  he  did  not  seem  to  know  it. 

I  felt  like  calling  out  to  him — to  one  of  them 
— telling  him  out  loud  to  himself,  wrapped 
away  as  he  was,  in  his  haste  and  dumbness, 
not  knowing,  and  in  the  funny  little  noise  of 
cities  in  the  great  still  light.  And  so  while 
the  godlikeness  and  the  might  of  sleep  was 
upon  me,  I  watched  him,  longed  for  him, 
wanted  him  for  myself.  I  thought  of  my  great 
cold,  stretched-out  wisdom.  How  empty  and 
bare  it  was,  this  staring  at  stars  one  by  one, 
this  taking  notes  on  creation,  this  slow  painful 
tour  of  space,  when  after  all  right  down  there 


focusing 


364 


Xost  art  of  IReaoina 


y  ocusiny  in  this  little  man,  I  said  "  Is  not  all  I  can  know, 
or  hope  to  know  stowed  away  and  written 
up  ?  "  And  when  I  thought  of  this  —  the  blur  of 
sleep  still  upon  me  —  I  could  hardly  help  reach- 
ing down  for  him,  half-patronising  him,  half- 
worshipping  him,  taking  him  up  to  myself, 
where  I  could  keep  him  by  me,  keep  him  to 
consult,  watch  for  the  sun,  face  for  the  infinite. 
—"Dear  little  fellow!"  I  said,  "my  own 
queer  little  fellow!  my  own  little  Kosmos, 
pocket-size!  " 

I  thought  how  convenient  it  would  be  if  I 
could  take  one  in  my  hand,  do  my  seeing 
through  it,  focus  my  universe  with  it.  And 
when  the  strange  mood  left  me  and  I  came  to, 
I  remembered  or  thought  I  remembered  that  I 
was  one  of  Those  myself.  "  Why  not  be  your 
own  little  Kosmos-glass  ?  "  I  said. 

I  have  been  trying  it  now  for  some  time.  It 
is  hard  to  regulate  the  focus  of  course,  and  it 
is  not  always  what  it  ought  to  be.  It  has  to 
be  allowed  for  some.  I  do  not  claim  much  for 
it.  But  it's  better,  such  as  it  is,  than  a  sheer 
bit  of  Nothing,  I  think,  to  look  at  a  universe 
with. 

II 


Ibuman  TUnit 


It  matters  little  that  the  worlds  that  are 
made  in  this  way  are  very  different  in  detail  or 
emphasis,  that  some  of  them  are  much  smaller 


TTbe  Ibuman  mutt  365 

and  more  twisted  than  others.  The  great 
point,  so  far  as  education  is  concerned,  is  for 
all  teachers  to  realise  that  every  man  is  a 
whole  world,  that  it  is  possible  and  natural  for 
every  man  to  be  a  whole  world.  His  very  body 
is,  and  there  must  be  some  way  for  him  to  have 
a  whole  world  in  his  mind.  A  being  who  finds 
a  way  of  living  a  world  into  his  face  can  find  a 
way  of  reading  a  world  together.  If  a  man  is 
going  to  have  unity,  read  his  world  together, 
possess  all-in-oneness  in  knowledge,  he  will 
have  to  have  it  the  way  he  has  it  in  his  face. 

It  is  superficial  to  assume,  as  scientists  are 
apt  to  do,  that  in  a  world  where  there  are  in- 
finite things  to  know,  a  man's  knowledge  must 
have  unity  or  can  have  unity,  in  and  of  itself. 
The  moment  that  all  the  different  knowledges 
of  a  man  are  passed  over  or  allowed  to  be  passed 
over  into  his  personal  qualities,  into  the  muscles 
and  traits  and  organs  and  natural  expressions 
of  the  man,  they  have  unity  and  force  and  order 
and  meaning  as  a  matter  of  course.  Infinite 
opposites  of  knowledge,  recluses  and  separates 
of  knowledge  are  gathered  and  can  be  seen 
gathered  every  day  in  almost  any  man,  in  the 
glance  of  his  eye,  in  the  turn  of  his  lip,  or  in 
the  blow  of  his  fist. 

It  is  not  the  method  of  science  as  science, 
and  it  is  not  in  any  sense  put  forward  as  the 
proper  method  for  a  man  to  use  in  his  mere 
specialty,  but  it  does  seem  to  be  true  that  if  a 
man  wants  to  know  things  which  he  does  not 


366 


%ost  Brt  of 


Ube 

Urmnian 

Ulntt 


intend  to  know  all  of,  the  best  and  most  scien- 
tific way  for  him  to  know  such  things  is  to 
reach  out  to  them  and  know  them  through 
their  human  or  personal  relations.  I  can  only 
speak  for  myself,  but  I  have  found  for  one  that 
the  easiest  and  most  thorough,  practical  way 
for  me  to  get  the  benefit  of  things  I  do  not 
know,  is  to  know  a  man  who  does.  If  he  is 
an  educated  man,  a  man  who  really  knows, 
who  has  made  what  he  knows  over  into  himself, 
I  find  if  I  know  him  that  I  get  it  all — the  gist 
of  it.  The  spirit  of  his  knowledge,  its  attitude 
toward  life,  is  all  in  the  man,  and  if  I  really 
know  the  man,  absorb  his  nature,  drink  deep 
at  his  soul,  I  know  what  he  knows — it  seems 
to  me — and  what  I  know  besides.  It  is  true 
that  I  cannot  express  it  precisely.  He  would 
have  to  give  the  lecture  or  diagram  of  it,  but  I 
know  it — know  what  it  comes  to  in  life,  his  life 
and  my  life.  I  can  be  seen  going  around  living 
with  it  afterwards,  any  day.  His  knowledge 
is  summed  up  in  him,  his  whole  world  is  read 
together  in  him,  belongs  to  him,  and  he  belongs 
to  me.  To  know  a  man  is  to  know  what  he 
knows  in  its  best  form — the  things  that  have 
made  the  man  possible. 

A  great  portrait  painter,  it  has  always  seemed 
to  me,  is  a  kind  of  god  in  his  way  —  knows 
everything  his  sitters  know.  He  knows  what 
every  man's  knowledge  has  done  with  the  man 
— the  best  part  of  it  —  and  makes  it  speak.  I 
have  never  yet  found  myself  looking  at  great 


t>igber  Cannibalism 


walls  of  faces  (one  painter's  faces),  found  my- 
self walking  up  and  down  in  Sargent's  soul, 
without  thinking  what  a  great  inhabited, 
trooped-th rough  man  he  was— all  knowledges 
flocking  to  him,  showing  their  faces  to  him, 
from  the  ends  of  the  earth,  emptying  their 
secrets  silently  out  to  his  brush.  If  a  man  like 
Sargent  has  for  one  of  his  sitters  a  great  as- 
tronomer, an  astronomer  who  is  really  great, 
who  knows  and  absorbs  stars,  Sargent  absorbs 
the  man,  and  as  a  last  result  the  stars  in  the 
man,  and  the  man  in  Sargent,  and  the  man's 
stars  in  Sargent,  all  look  out  of  the  canvas. 

It  is  the  spirit  that  sums  up  and  unifies 
knowledge.  It  is  a  fact  to  be  reckoned  with, 
in  education,  that  knowledge  can  be  summed 
up,  and  that  the  best  summing  up  of  it  is  a 
human  face. 

Ill 

Gbe  Ibigber  Cannibalism 

It  is  not  unnatural  to  claim,  therefore,  that 
the  most  immediate  and  important  short-cut  in 
knowledge  that  the  comprehensive  or  educated 
man  can  take  comes  to  him  through  his  human 
and  personal  relations.  There  is  no  better  way 
of  getting  at  the  spirits  of  facts,  of  tracing  out 
valuable  and  practical  laws  or  generalisations, 
than  the  habit  of  trying  things  on  to  people  in 
one's  mind. 


TTbe 

tigber 

Cannibals 

ism 


368 


Xost  Hrt  of 


Ube 
fjtgber 

Cannibals 
ism 


I  have  always  thought  that  if  I  ever  got  dis- 
couraged and  had  to  be  an  editor,  I  would  do 
this  more  practically.  As  it  is,  I  merely  do  it 
with  books.  I  find  no  more  satisfactory  way 
of  reading  most  books — the  way  one  has  to — 
through  their  backs,  than  reading  the  few 
books  that  one  does  read,  through  persons  and 
for  persons  and  with  persons.  It  is  a  great 
waste  of  time  to  read  a  book  alone.  One  needs 
room  for  rows  of  one's  friends  in  a  book.  One 
book  read  through  the  eyes  of  ten  people  has 
more  reading  matter  in  it  than  ten  books  read 
in  a  common,  lazy,  lonesome  fashion.  One 
likes  to  do  it,  not  only  because  one  finds  one's 
self  enjoying  a  book  ten  times  over,  getting  ten 
people's  worth  out  of  it,  but  because  it  makes 
a  kind  of  sitting-room  of  one's  mind,  puts  a 
fire-place  in  it,  and  one  watches  the  ten  people 
enjoying  one  another. 

It  may  be  for  better  and  it  may  be  for 
worse,  but  I  have  come  to  the  point  where,  if  I 
really  care  about  a  book,  the  last  thing  I  want 
to  do  with  it  is  to  sit  down  in  a  chair  and  read 
it  by  myself.  If  I  were  ever  to  get  so  low  in 
my  mind  as  to  try  to  give  advice  to  a  real  live 
author  (any  author  but  a  dead  one),  it  would 
be,  "  lyet  there  be  room  for  all  of  us,  O  Author, 
in  your  book.  If  I  am  to  read  a  live,  happy, 
human  book,  give  me  a  bench." 

I  have  noticed  that  getting  at  truth  on  most 
subjects  is  a  dramatic  process  rather  than  an 
argumentative  one.  One  gets  at  truth  either 


Ube  Ibfober  Cannibalism 


in  a  book  or  in  a  conversation  not  so  much  by 
logic  as  by  having  different  people  speak.  If 
what  is  wanted  is  a  really  comprehensive  view 
of  a  subject,  two  or  three  rather  different  men 
placed  in  a  row  and  talking  about  it,  saying 
what  they  think  about  it  in  a  perfectly  plain 
way,  without  argument,  will  do  more  for  it 
than  two  or  three  hundred  syllogisms.  A  man 
seems  to  be  the  natural  or  wild  form  of  the 
syllogism,  which  this  world  has  tacitly  agreed 
to  adopt.  Even  when  he  is  a  very  poor  one  he 
works  better  with  most  people  than  the  other 
kind.  If  a  man  takes  a  few  other  men  (very 
different  ones),  uses  them  as  glasses  to  see  a 
truth  through,  it  will  make  him  as  wise  in  a 
few  minutes,  with  that  truth,  as  a  whole  human 
race. 

Knowledge  which  comes  to  a  man  with  any 
particular  sweep  or  scope  is,  in  the  very  nature 
of  things,  dramatic. 

[I  fear,  Gentle  Reader,  I  am  Hearing  a  con- 
viction. I  feel  a  certain  constraint  coining 
over  me.  I  always  do,  when  I  am  neariiig 
a  conviction.  I  never  can  be  sure  how  my 
soul  will  take  it  upon  itself  to  act  when  I  am 
making  the  attempt  I  am  making  now,  to  state 
what  is  to  me  an  intensely  personal  belief,  in  a 
general,  convincing,  or  impersonal  way.  The 
embarrassing  part  of  a  conviction  is  that  IT  is 
SO.  And  when  a  man  attempts  to  state  a 
thing  as  it  is,  to  speak  for  God  or  everybody, 


Cbe 

TbUiber 

Cannibals 

ism 


370 


%ost  Brt  of  IReaoing 


•Cbe 

tXgber 

Cannibals 

ism 


— well,  it  would  not  be  respectable  not  to  be 
embarrassed  a  little  —  speaking  for  God.  I 
know  perfectly  well,  sitting  here  at  my  desk, 
this  minute,  with  this  conviction  up  in  my 
pen,  that  it  is  merely  a  little  thing  of  my  own, 
that  I  ought  to  go  on  from  this  point  cool  and 
straight  with  it.  But  it  is  a  conviction,  and  if 
you  find  me,  Gentle  Reader,  in  the  very  next 
page,  swivelling  off  and  speaking  for  God,  I  can 
only  beg  that  both  He  and  you  will  forgive  me. 
I  solemnly  assure  you  herewith,  that,  however 
it  may  look,  I  am  merely  speaking  for  myself. 
I  have  thought  of  having  a  rubber  stamp  for 
this  book,  a  stamp  with  IT  SEEMS  TO  ME  on  it. 
A  good  many  of  these  pages  need  going  over 
with  it  afterwards.  I  do  not  suppose  there  is 
a  man  living — either  I  or  any  other  dogmatist — 
who  would  not  enjoy  more  speaking  for  himself 
(if  anybody  would  notice  it)  than  speaking  for 
God.  I  have  a  hope  that  if  I  can  only  hold 
myself  to  it  on  this  subject  I  shall  do  much 
better  in  speaking  for  myself,  and  may  speak 
accidentally  for  God  besides.  I  leave  it  for 
others  to  say,  but  it  is  hard  not  to  point  a  little 
— in  a  few  places.] 

But  here  is  the  conviction.  As  I  was  going 
to  say,  knowledge  which  comes  to  a  man  with 
any  particular  sweep  or  scope  is  in  the  very 
nature  of  things  dramatic.  If  the  minds  of 
two  men  expressing  opinions  in  the  dark  could 
be  flashed  on  a  canvas,  if  there  could  be  such 
a  thing  as  a  composite  photograph  of  an  opinion 


ZEbe  Ibfober  Cannibalism 


371 


— a  biograph  of  it, — it  would  prove  to  be,  with 
nine  men  out  of  ten,  a  dissolving  view  of  faces. 
The  unspoken  sides  of  thought  are  all  dramatic. 
The  palest  generalisation  a  man  can  express, 
if  it  could  be  first  stretched  out  into  its  origins, 
and  then  in  its  origins  could  be  crowded  up 
and  focused,  would  be  found  to  be  a  long  un- 
conscious procession  of  human  beings — a  mur- 
mur of  countless  voices.  All  our  knowledge 
is  conceived  at  first,  taken  up  and  organised  in 
actual  men,  flashed  through  the  delights  of 
souls  and  the  music  of  voices  upon  our  brains. 
If  it  is  true  even  in  the  business  of  the  street 
that  the  greatest  efficiency  is  reached  by  dealers 
who  mix  with  the  knowledge  of  their  subject 
a  keen  appreciation  and  mastery  of  men,  it  is 
still  more  true  of  the  business  of  the  mind  that 
the  greatest,  most  natural  and  comprehensive 
results  are  reached  through  the  dramatic  or 
human  insights. 

All  our  knowledge  is  dead  drama.  Wisdom 
is  always  some  old  play  faded  out,  blurred 
into  abstractions.  A  principle  is  a  wonderful 
disguised  biograph.  The  power  of  Carlyle's 
French  Revolution  is  that  it  is  a  great  spiritual 
play,  a  series  of  pictures  and  faces. 

It  was  the  French  Revolution  all  happening 
over  cgain  to  Carlyle,  and  it  was  another 
French  Revolution  to  every  one  of  his  readers. 
It  was  dynamic,  an  induced  current  from  Paris 
via  Craigenputtock,  because  it  was  dramatic — 
great  abstractions,  playing  magnificently  over 


Ube 

fjigber 

Cannibals 

tern 


372 


Xost  Hrt  of  TCeafcing 


Ube 

tmibcr 

Cannibals 

tern 


great  concretes.  Every  man  in  Carlyle's  his- 
tory is  a  philosophy,  and  every  abstraction  in 
it  a  man's  face,  a  beckoning  to  us.  He  always 
seems  to  me  a  kind  of  colossus  of  a  man  stalking 
across  the  dark,  way  out  in  The  Past,  using 
men  as  search-lights.  He  could  not  help  do- 
ing his  thinking  in  persons,  and  everything  he 
touches  is  terribly  and  beautifully  alive.  It 
was  because  he  saw  things  in  persons,  that  is, 
in  great,  rapid,  organised  sum-totals  of  experi- 
ence and  feeling,  that  he  was  able  to  make  so 
much  of  so  little  as  a  historian,  and  what  is 
quite  as  important  (at  least  in  history),  so  little 
of  so  much. 

The  true  criticism  of  Carlyle  as  a  historian 
is  not  a  criticism  of  his  method,  that  he 
went  about  in  events  and  eras  doing  his 
seeing  and  thinking  with  persons,  but  that 
there  were  certain  sorts  of  persons  that  Car- 
lyle, with  his  mere  lighted-up-brute  imagina- 
tion, could  never  see  with.  They  were  opaque 
to  him.  Every  time  he  lifted  one  of  them  up 
to  see  ten  years  with,  or  a  bevy  of  events  or 
whatever  it  might  be,  he  merely  made  blots  or 
sputters  with  them,  on  his  page.  But  it  was 
his  method  that  made  it  a  great  page,  wider 
and  deeper  and  more  splendid  than  any  of  the 
others,  and  the  blots  were  always  obvious  blots, 
did  no  harm  there — no  historical  harm — almost 
any  one  could  see  them,  and  if  they  could  not, 
were  there  not  always  plenty  of  little  chilled- 
through  historians,  pattering  around  after  him, 


Ube 


Cannibalism 


373 


tracking  them  out?  But  the  great  point  of 
Carlyle's  method  was  that  he  kept  his  per- 
spective with  it.  Never  flattened  out  like 
other  historians,  by  tables  of  statistics,  unbe- 
wildered  by  the  blur  of  nobodies,  he  was  able 
to  have  a  live,  glorious  giant's  way  of  writing, 
a  godlike  method  of  handling  great  handfuls 
of  events  in  one  hand,  of  unrolling  great 
stretches  of  history  with  a  look,  of  seeing 
things  and  making  things  seen,  in  huge,  broad, 
focussed,  vivid  human  wholes.  It  was  a  his- 
torical method  of  treating  great  masses,  which 
Thomas  Carlyle  and  Shakespeare  and  Homer 
and  the  Old  Testament  all  have  in  common. 

The  fact  that  it  fails  in  the  letter  and  with 
hordes  of  literal  persons,  that  it  has  great  gaps 
of  temperament  left  over  in  it,  is  of  lesser 
weight.  The  letter  passes  by  (thank  Heaven !) 
in  the  great  girths  of  time  and  space.  In  all 
lasting  or  real  history,  only  the  spirit  has  a 
right  to  live.  Temperaments  in  histories  even 
at  the  worst  are  easily  allowed  for,  filled  out 
with  temperaments  of  other  historians — that  is, 
they  ought  to  be  and  are  going  to  be  if  we  ever 
have  real  historians  any  more,  historians  great 
enough  and  alive  enough  to  have  tempera- 
ments, and  with  temperaments  great  enough 
to  write  history  the  way  God  does — that  can  be 
read. 

History  can  only  be  truly  written  by  men 
who  have  concepts  of  history,  and  ' '  Every 
concept,"  says  Hegel,  ''must  be  universal, 


•fcigber 
Cannibab 

10111 


374 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaMna 


Ubc 

tigbcr 

Cannibals 

ism 


concrete,  and  particular,  or  else  it  cannot  be 
a  concept."  That  is,  it  must  be  dramatic. 

And  what  is  true  of  a  great  natural  man  or 
man  of  genius  like  Carlyle  is  equally  true  of 
all  other  natural  persons  whether  men  of  genius 
or  not.  A  stenographic  report  of  all  the 
thoughts  of  almost  any  man's  brain  for  a  day 
would  prove  to  almost  any  scientist  how  spirit- 
ually organised,  personally  conducted  a  human 
being's  brain  is  bound  to  be,  almost  in  spite 
of  itself —even  when  it  has  been  educated,  arti- 
ficially numbed  and  philosophised.  A  man 
may  not  know  the  look  of  the  inside  of  his 
mind  well  enough  to  formulate  or  recognise  it, 
but  nearly  every  man's  thinking  is  done,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  either  in  people,  or  to  people, 
or  for  people,  or  out  of  people.  It  is  the  way 
he  grows,  the  way  the  world  is  woven  through 
his  being,  the  way  of  having  life  more  abun- 
dantly. 

It  is  not  at  all  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  if 
Shakespeare  had  not  created  his  characters 
they  would  have  created  him.  One  need  not 
wonder  so  very  much  that  Shakespeare  grew  so 
masterfully  in  his  later  plays  and  as  the  years 
went  on.  Such  a  troop  of  people  as  flocked 
through  Shakespeare's  soul  would  have  made 
a  Shakespeare  (allowing  more  time  for  it)  out 
of  almost  anybody. 

The  essential  wonder  of  Shakespeare,  the 
greatness  which  has  made  men  try  to  make  a 
dozen  specialists  out  of  him,  is  not  so  very 


Ube  Tbigber  Cannibalism 


375 


wonderful  when  one  considers  that  he  was  a 
dramatist.  A  dramatist  cannot  help  growing 
great.  At  least  he  has  the  outfit  for  it  if  he 
wants  to.  One  hardly  wants  to  be  caught  giv- 
ing a  world  recipe, — a  prescription  for  being  a 
great  man;  but  it  does  look  sometimes  as  if  the 
habit  of  reading  for  persons,  of  being  a  sort  of 
spiritual  cannibal,  or  man-eater,  of  going  about 
through  all  the  world  absorbing  personalities 
the  way  other  men  absorb  facts,  would  gradual- 
ly store  up  personality  in  a  man,  and  make  him 
great — almost  inconveniently  great,  at  times, 
and  in  spite  of  himself.  The  probabilities  seem 
to  be  that  it  was  because  Shakespeare  instinc- 
tively picked  out  persons  in  the  general  scheme 
of  knowledge  more  than  facts;  it  was  because 
persons  seemed  to  him,  on  the  whole  in  every 
age,  to  be  the  main  facts  the  age  was  for,summed 
the  most  facts  up;  it  was  because  they  made 
him  see  the  most  facts,  helped  him  to  feel  and 
act  on  facts,  made  facts  experiences  to  him, 
that  William  Shakespeare  became  so  supreme 
and  masterful  with  facts  and  men  both. 

To  learn  how  to  be  pro  tern,  all  kinds  of  men, 
about  all  things,  to  enjoy  their  joys  in  the 
things,  is  the  greatest  and  the  livest  way  of 
learning  the  things. 

To  learn  to  be  a  Committee  of  the  Tempera- 
ments all  by  one's  self  (which  is  what  Shake- 
speare did)  is  at  once  the  method  and  the  end 
of  education — outside  of  one's  specialty. 

There  could  be  no  better  method  of  doing 


Ube 

fjfgber 

Cannibal* 

ism 


376 


%ost  Brt  of  IReaoing 


TEbe 

t)igber 

Cannibals 

lent 


this  (no  method  open  to  everybody)  than  the 
method, — outside  of  one's  specialty, — of  read- 
ing for  persons  and  with  persons.  It  makes  all 
one's  life  a  series  of  spiritual  revelations.  It 
is  like  having  regular  habits  of  being  born 
again,  of  having  new  experiences  at  will.  It 
mobilises  all  love  and  passion  and  delight  in  the 
world  and  sends  it  flowing  past  one's  door. 

In  this  day  of  immeasurable  exercises,  why 
does  not  some  one  put  in  a  word  for  the  good 
old-fashioned  exercise  of  being  born  again  ?  It 
is  an  exercise  which  few  men  seem  to  believe 
in,  not  even  once  in  a  lifetime,  but  it  is  easily 
the  best  all-around  drill  for  living,  and  even 
for  reading,  that  can  be  arranged.  And  it  is 
not  a  very  difficult  exercise  if  one  knows  how, 
does  it  regularly  enough.  It  is  not  at  all  neces- 
sary to  go  off  to  another  world  to  believe  in  re- 
incarnations, if  one  practises  on  them  every 
day.  Women  have  always  seemed  to  be  more 
generally  in  the  way  of  being  born  again  than 
men,  but  they  have  less  scope  and  sometimes 
there  is  a  certain  feverish  small  ness  about  it, 
and  when  men  once  get  started  (like  Robert 
Browning  in  distinction  from  Mrs.  Browning) 
they  make  the  method  of  being  born  again 
seem  a  great  triumphant  one.  They  seem  to 
have  a  larger  repertoire  to  be  born  to,  and 
they  go  through  it  more  rapidly  and  justly. 
At  the  same  time  it  is  true  that  nearly  all  wo- 
men are  more  or  less  familiar  with  the  exercise 
of  being  born  again — living  pro  tern,  and  at 


IbiQber  Cannibalism 


377 


will — in  others,  and  only  a  few  men  do  it — 
merely  the  greatest  ones,  statesmen,  diplo- 
mats, editors,  poets,  great  financiers,  and  other 
prophets — all  men  who  live  by  seeing  more 
than  others  have  time  for.  They  are  found  to 
do  their  seeing  rather  easily  on  the  whole. 
They  do  it  by  the  perfectly  normal  exercise  of 
being  born  into  other  men,  looking  out  of  their 
eyes  a  minute,  whenever  they  like.  All  great 
power  in  its  first  stage  is  essentially  dramatic, 
a  man-judging,  man-illuminating  power,  the 
power  of  guessing  what  other  people  are  going 
to  think  and  do. 

When  the  world  points  out  to  the  young  man, 
as  it  is  very  fond  of  doing,  that  he  must  learn 
from  experience,  what  it  really  means  is,  that 
he  must  learn  from  his  dramatic  drill  in  human 
life,  his  contact  with  real  persons,  his  slow, 
compulsory  scrupulous  going  the  rounds  of  his 
heart,  putting  himself  in  the  place  of  real 
persons. 

Probably  every  man  who  lives,  in  proportion 
as  he  covets  power  or  knowledge,  would  like  to 
be  (at  will  at  least)  a  kind  of  focused  every- 
body. It  is  true  that  in  his  earlier  stages,  and 
in  his  lesser  moods  afterward,  he  would  prob- 
ably seem  to  most  people  a  somewhat  teetering 
person,  diffused,  chaotic,  or  contradictory.  It 
could  hardly  be  helped — with  the  raw  materials 
of  a  great  man  all  scattered  around  in  him, 
great  unaccounted-for  insights,  idle-looking 
powers  all  as  yet  unfused.  But  a  man  in  the 


Ube 

Ibfgber 
Cannibals 

ism 


378 


Xost  Hrt  of 


Spiritual 

Ubrift 


long  run  (and  longer  the  better)  is  always 
worth  while,  no  matter  how  he  looks  in  the 
making,  and  it  certainly  does  seem  reasonable, 
however  bad  it  may  look,  that  this  is  the  way 
he  is  made,  that  in  proportion  as  he  does  his 
knowing  spiritually  and  powerfully,  he  will 
have  to  do  it  dramatically.  It  sometimes 
seems  as  if  knowing,  in  the  best  sense,  were  a 
kind  of  rotary-person  process,  a  being  every- 
body in  a  row,  a  state  of  living  symposium. 
The  interpenetrating,  blending-in,  digesting 
period  comes  in  due  course,  the  time  of  settling 
down  into  himself,  and  behold  the  man  is 
made,  a  unified,  concentrated,  individual,  uni- 
versal man — a  focused  everybody. 

This  is  not  quite  being  a  god  perhaps,  but  it 
is  as  near  to  it,  on  the  whole,  as  a  man  can 
conveniently  get. 

IV 

Spiritual  Ebrift 

But  perhaps  one  of  the  most  interesting 
things  about  doing  up  one's  knowing  in  per- 
sons is  that  it  is  not  only  the  most  alive,  but 
the  most  economical  knowledge  that  can  be  ob- 
tained. On  the  whole,  eleven  or  twelve  people 
do  very  well  to  know  the  world  with,  if  one 
can  get  a  complete  set,  if  they  are  different 
enough,  and  one  knows  them  down  through. 
The  rest  of  the  people  that  one  sees  about,  from 


Spiritual  TTbrift 


379 


the  point  of  view  of  stretching  one's  compre- 
hension, one's  essential  sympathy  or  know- 
ledge, do  not  count  very  much.  They  are 
duplicates — to  be  respected  and  to  be  loved,  of 
course,  but  to  be  kept  in  the  cellar  of  actual 
consciousness.  There  is  no  other  way  to  do. 
Everybody  was  not  intended  to  be  used  by 
everybody.  It  is  because  we  think  that  they 
were,  mostly,  that  we  have  come  to  our  present, 
modern,  heartlessly-cordial  fashion  of  knowing 
people — knowing  people  by  parlourfuls — whole 
parlourfuls  at  a  time.  ' '  Is  thy  servant  a 
whale?"  said  my  not  unsociable  soul  to  me. 
"  Is  one  to  be  fed  with  one's  kind  as  if  they 
were  animalculae,  as  if  they  had  to  be  taken  in 
the  bulk  if  one  were  really  to  get  something  ?  " 
It  is  heartless  and  shallow  enough.  Who  is 
not  weary  of  it  ?  No  one  knows  anybody  now- 
adays. He  merely  knows  everybody.  He 
falls  before  The  Reception  Room.  A  reception 
room  is  a  place  where  we  set  people  up  in  rows 
like  pickets  on  a  fence  to  know  them.  Then 
like  the  small  boy  with  a  stick,  one  tap  per 
picket,  we  run  along  knowing  people.  No  one 
comes  in  touch  with  any  one.  It  is  getting  so 
that  there  is  hardly  any  possible  way  left  in 
our  modern  life  for  knowing  people  except 
by  marrying  them.  One  cannot  even  be  sure 
of  that,  when  one  thinks  how  married  people 
are  being  driven  about  by  books  and  by  other 
people.  Society  is  a  crowd  of  crowds  mutually 
destroying  each  other  and  literature  is  a  crowd 


Spiritual 
Ubrift 


3  So 


SLost  Hrt  of 


Spiritual 
Ubrift 


of  books  all  shutting  each  other  up,  and  the 
law  seems  to  be  either  selection  or  annihilation, 
whether  in  reading  or  living.  The  only  way 
to  love  everybody  in  this  world  seems  to  be  to 
pick  out  a  few  in  it,  delegates  of  everybody, 
and  use  these  few  to  read  with,  and  to  love  and 
understand  the  world  with,  and  to  keep  close 
to  it,  all  one's  days. 

The  higher  form  one's  facts  are  put  in  in  this 
world  the  fewer  one  needs.  To  know  twelve 
extremely  different  souls  utterly,  to  be  able  to 
borrow  them  at  will,  turn  them  on  all  know- 
ledge, bring  them  to  bear  at  a  moment's  notice 
on  anything  one  likes,  is  to  be  an  educated, 
masterful  man  in  the  most  literal  possible  sense. 
Except  in  mere  matters  of  physical  fact,  things 
which  are  small  enough  to  be  put  in  encyclo- 
pedias and  looked  up  there,  a  man  with  twelve 
deeply  loved  or  deeply  pitied  souls  woven  into 
the  texture  of  his  being  can  flash  down  into 
almost  any  knowledge  that  he  needs,  or  go  out 
around  almost  any  ignorance  that  is  in  his  way, 
through  all  the  earth.  The  shortest  way  for 
an  immortal  soul  to  read  a  book  is  to  know 
and  absorb  enough  other  immortal  souls,  and 
get  them  to  help.  Any  system  of  education 
which  like  our  present  prevailing  one  is  so 
vulgar,  so  unpsychological,  as  to  overlook  the 
soul  as  the  organ  and  method  of  knowledge, 
which  fails  to  see  that  the  knowledge  of  human 
souls  is  itself  the  method  of  acquiring  all  other 
knowledge  and  of  combining  and  utilising  it, 


Spiritual  Tlbrift 


381 


makes  narrow  and  trivial  and  impotent  scholars 
as  a  matter  of  course. 

Knowledge  of  human  nature  and  of  one's 
self  is  the  nervous  system  of  knowledge,  the 
flash  and  culmination,  the  final  thoroughness 
of  all  the  knowledge  that  is  worth  knowing 
and  of  all  ways  of  knowing  it. 

It  is  all  a  theory,  I  suppose.  I  cannot  prove 
anything  with  it.  I  dare  say  it  is  true  that 
neither  I  nor  any  one  else  can  get,  by  reading  in 
this  way,  what  I  like  to  think  I  am  getting, 
slowly,  a  cross-section  of  the  universe.  But  it 
is  something  to  get  as  time  goes  on  a  cross-sec- 
tion of  all  the  human  life  that  is  being  lived  in 
it.  It  is  something  to  take  each  knowledge  that 
comes,  strike  all  the  keys  of  one's  friends  on  it — 
clear  the  keyboard  of  space  on  it.  When  one 
really  does  this,  nothing  can  happen  to  one 
which  does  not  or  cannot  happen  to  one  in  the 
way  one  likes.  Events  and  topics  in  this  world 
are  determined  to  a  large  degree  by  circum- 
stances— dandelions,  stars,  politics,  bob-whites, 
acids,  Kant,  and  domestic  science — but  person- 
alities, a  man's  means  of  seeing  things,  are  de- 
termined only  by  the  limits  of  his  imagination. 
One's  knowledge  of  pictures,  or  of  Kant,  of  bob- 
whites  or  acids,  cannot  be  applied  to  every  con- 
ceivable occasion,  but  nothing  can  happen  in 
all  the  world  that  one  cannot  see  or  feel  or  de- 
light in,  or  suffer  in,  through  Charles  Lamb's 
soul  if  one  has  really  acquired  it.  One  can  be  a 
Charles  Lamb  almost  anywhere  toward  almost 


Spiritual 
Ubrtft 


382 


Xost  Hrt  of 


Spiritual 
Shrift 


anything  that  happens  along,  or  a  Robert 
Burns  or  a  Socrates  or  a  Heine,  or  an  Amiel 
or  a  Dickens  or  Hugo  or  any  one,  or  one  can 
hush  one's  soul  one  eternal  moment  and  be  the 
Son  of  God.  To  know  a  few  men,  to  turn  them 
into  one's  books,  to  turn  them  into  one  another, 
into  one's  self,  to  study  history  with  their 
hearts,  to  know  all  men  that  live  with  them, 
to  put  them  all  together  and  guess  at  God  with 
them — it  seems  to  me  that  knowledge  that  is 
as  convenient  and  penetrating,  as  easily  turned 
on  and  off,  as  much  like  a  light  as  this,  is  well 
worth  having.  It  would  be  like  taking  away 
a  whole  world,  if  it  were  taken  away  from  me 
— the  little  row  of  people  I  do  my  reading  with. 
And  some  of  them  are  supposed  to  be  dead — 
hundreds  of  years. 

But  the  dramatic  principle  in  education 
strikes  both  ways.  While  it  is  true  that  one 
does  not  need  a  very  large  outfit  of  people  to 
do  one's  knowing  with,  if  one  has  the  habit  of 
thinking  in  persons,  it  is  still  more  true  that 
one  does  not  need  a  large  outfit  of  books. 

As  I  sit  in  my  library  facing  the  fire  I  fancy 
I  hear,  sometimes,  my  books  eating  each  other 
up.  One  by  one  through  the  years  they  have 
disappeared  from  me — only  portraits  or  titles 
are  left.  The  more  beautiful  book  absorbs  the 
less  and  the  greater  folds  itself  around  the 
small.  I  seldom  take  down  a  book  that  was  an 
enthusiasm  once  without  discovering  that  the 


Spiritual  ZTbrtft 


383 


heart  of  it  has  fled  away,  has  stealthily  moved 
over,  while  I  dreamed,  to  some  other  book. 
Lowell  and  Whittier  are  footnotes  scattered 
about  in  several  volumes,  now.  J.  G.  Holland 
(Sainte-Beuve  of  my  youth!)  is  digested  by  Mat- 
thew Arnold  and  Matthew  Arnold  by  Walter 
Pater  and  Walter  Pater  by  Walt  Whitman. 
Montaigne  and  Plato  have  moved  over  into 
Emerson,  and  Emerson  has  been  distilled  slow- 
ly into — forty  years.  Holmes  has  dissolved  into 
Charles  Lamb  and  Thomas  Browne.  A  big 
volume  of  Rossetti  (whom  I  oddly  knew  first) 
is  lost  in  a  little  volume  of  Keats,  and  as  I  sit 
and  wait  Ruskin  and  Carlyle  are  going  fast 
into  a  battered  copy  on  my  desk — of  the  Old 
Testament.  Once  let  the  dramatic  principle 
get  well  started  in  a  man's  knowledge  and  it 
seems  to  keep  on  sending  him  up  new  currents 
the  way  his  heart  does,  whether  he  notices  it 
or  not.  If  a  man  will  leave  his  books  and  his 
people  to  themselves,  if  he  will  let  them  do 
with  him  and  with  one  another  what  they  want 
to  do,  they  all  work  while  he  sleeps.  If  the 
spirit  of  knowledge,  the  dramatic  principle  in 
it,  is  left  free,  knowledge  all  but  comes  to  a 
man  of  itself,  cannot  help  coming,  like  the 
dew  on  the  grass.  With  enough  reading  for 
persons  one  need  not  buy  very  many  books. 
One  allows  for  unconscious  cerebration  in 
books.  Books  not  only  have  a  way  of  being 
read  through  their  backs,  but  of  reading  one 
another. 


Spiritual 
•Cbrift 


384 


Xost  Hrt  ot  TReaDing 


Ube  Citg, 
tbe 

Cburcb, 
anb  tbe 
College 


Gbe  Cit&  tbe  Cburcb,  ant)  tbe 
College 

The  greatest  event  of  the  nineteenth  century 
was  that  somewhere  in  it,  at  some  immense 
and  hidden  moment  in  it,  human  knowledge 
passed  silently  over  from  the  emphasis  of  Per- 
sons to  the  emphasis  of  Things. 

I  have  walked  up  and  down  Broadway  when 
the  whole  street  was  like  a  prayer  to  me — miles 
of  it  —  a  long  dull  cry  to  its  little  strip  of 
heaven.  I  have  been  on  the  Elevated — the 
huge  shuttle  of  the  great  city — hour  by  hour, 
had  my  soul  woven  into  New  York  on  it,  back 
and  forth,  up  and  down,  until  it  was  hardly  a 
soul  at  all,  a  mere  ganglion,  a  quivering, 
pressed-in  nerve  of  second-story  windows,  skies 
of  clotheslines,  pale  faces,  mist  and  rumble 
and  dust.  "Perhaps  I  have  a  soul,"  I  say. 
' '  Perhaps  I  have  not.  Has  any  one  a  soul  ?  ' ' 
When  I  look  at  the  men  I  say  to  myself,  "  Now 
I  will  look  at  the  women,"  and  when  I  look  at 
the  women  I  say,  ' '  Now  I  will  look  at  the 
men. ' '  Then  I  look  at  shoes.  Men  are  cheap 
in  New  York.  Every  little  man  I  see  stewing 
along  the  street,  when  I  look  into  his  face  in 
my  long,  slow  country  way,  as  if  a  hill  belonged 
with  him  or  a  scrap  of  sky  or  something,  or  as  if 
he  really  counted,  looks  at  me  as  one  would  say, 
"  I  ?  I  am  a  millionth  of  New  York — and  you ? ' ' 


Ube  Cits,  tbe  Cburcb,  ano  tbe  College 


385 


I  am  not  even  that.  The  city  gathers  itself 
together  in  a  great  roar  about  me,  puts  its 
hands  to  its  mouth  and  bellows  in  my  country 
ears,  "  Men  are  cheap  enough,  dear  boy, 
did  n't  you  know  that?  See  those  dots  on 
Brooklyn  Bridge?" 

I  go  on  with  my  walk.  I  stop  and  look  up 
at  the  great  blocks.  "  Who  are  you?"  the 
great  blocks  say.  I  take  another  step.  I  am 
one  more  shuffle  on  the  street.  "  Men  are 
cheap.  I/>ok  at  us— "  a  thousand  show  win- 
dows say.  Are  there  not  square  miles  of 
human  countenance  drifting  up  Broadway 
any  day?  "And  where  are  they  going?"  I 
asked  my  soul.  "  To  oblivion  ?  " — "  They  are 
going  from  Things,"  said  my  soul,  "to 
Things";  and  sotto  voce,  "From  one  set  of 
Things  they  know  they  do  not  want,  to  an- 
other set  of  Things  they  do  not  know  they  do 
not  want." 

One  need  not  wonder  very  long  that  nearly 
every  man  one  knows  in  New  York  is  at  best 
a  mere  cheered-up  and  plucky  pessimist.  Of 
course  one  has  to  go  down  and  see  one's 
favourite  New  Yorker,  one  needs  to  and  wants 
to,  and  one  needs  to  get  wrought  in  with  him 
too,  but  when  one  gets  home,  who  is  there  who 
does  net  have  to  get  free  from  his  favourite 
New  Yorker,  shake  himself  off  from  him,  save 
his  soul  a  little  longer?  "  Men  are  cheap," 
it  keeps  saying  over  and  over  to  one, —  a 
New  York  soul  does.  It  keeps  coming  back — 


•Cbe  Cits, 

tbe 

Cburcb, 
anfc  tbe 
College 


386 


%ost  Hrt  ot 


trbe  cttie, 
tbe 

Cbiu-cb, 
and  tbe 
College 


whispering  through  all  the  aisles  of  thought. 
New  York  spreads  itself  like  a  vast  concrete  phi- 
losophy over  every  man's  spirit.  It  reeks  with 
cheapness,  human  cheapness.  How  could  it 
be  otherwise  with  a  New  York  man  ?  I  never 
come  home  from  New  York,  wander  through 
the  city  with  my  heart,  afterward,  look  down 
upon  it,  see  Broadway  with  this  little  man  on 
it,  fretting  up  and  down  between  his  twenty- 
story  blocks,  in  his  little  trough  of  din  under 
the  wide  heaven,  loomed  at  by  iron  and  glass, 
browbeaten  by  stone,  smothered  by  smoke,  but 
that  he  all  but  seems  to  me,  this  little  Broad- 
way man,  to  be  slipping  off  the  planet,  to 
barely  belong  to  the  planet.  I  feel  like  clutch- 
ing at  him,  helping  him  to  hold  on,  pitying 
him.  Then  I  remember  how  it  really  is  (if 
there  is  any  pitying  to  be  done), — this  crowded- 
over,  crowded-off,  matter-cringing,  callous- 
looking  man,  pities  me. 

When  I  was  coming  home  from  New  York 
the  last  time,  had  reached  a  safe  distance  be- 
hind my  engine,  out  in  the  fields,  I  found  my- 
self listening  all  over  again  to  the  roar  (saved 
up  in  me)  of  the  great  city.  I  tried  to  make 
it  out,  tried  to  analyse  what  it  was  that  the 
voice  of  the  great  city  said  to  me.  ' '  The  voice 
of  the  city  is  the  Voice  of  Things,"  my  soul 
said  to  me.  "And  the  Man  ?  "  I  said,  "  where 
does  the  Man  come  in  ?  Are  not  the  Things 
for  the  Man  ? ' '  Then  the  roar  of  the  great 
city  rose  up  about  me,  like  a  flood,  swallowed 


TTbe  Gft£,  tbe  Gburcb,  ant)  tbe  College 


387 


my  senses  in  itself,  numbed  and  overbore  me, 
swooned  my  soul  in  itself,   and  said:    "  No, 

THE  THINGS  ARE  NOT  FOR   THE   MAN.      THE 
MAN  IS  FOR  THE  THINGS." 

This  is  what  the  great  city  said.  And  while 
I  still  listened,  the  roar  broke  over  me  once 
more  with  its  NO!  NO!  NO!  its  million  voices 
in  it,  its  million  souls  in  it.  All  doubts  and 
fears  and  hates  and  cries,  all  deadnesses  flowed 
around  me,  took  possession  of  me. 

Then  I  remembered  the  iron  and  wood  faces 
of  the  men,  great  processions  of  them,  I  had 
seen  there,  the  strange,  protected-looking, 
boxed-in  faces  of  the  women,  faces  in  crates, 
I  had  seen,  and  I  understood.  "  New  York," 
I  said,  "  is  a  huge  war,  a  great  battle  numbered 
off  in  streets  and  houses,  every  man  against 
every  man,  every  man  a  shut-in,  self-defended 
man.  It  is  a  huge  lamp-lighted,  sun-lighted, 
ceaseless  struggle,  day  unto  day." 

"  But  New  York  is  not  the  world.  Try  the 
whole  world,"  said  my  soul  to  me.  "  Perhaps 
you  can  do  better.  Are  there  not  churches, 
men-making,  men-gathering  places,  oases  for 
strength  and  rest  in  it  ? " 

Then  I  went  to  all  the  churches  in  the  land 
at  once,  of  a  still  Sabbath  morning,  steeples  in 
the  fields  and  hills,  and  steeples  in  cities.  The 
sound  of  splendid  organs  praying  for  the  poor 
emptied  people,  the  long,  still,  innumerable 
sound  of  countless  collections  being  taken, 
the  drone  and  seesaw  of  sermons,  countless 


Ube  Cits, 

tbe 

Cburcb, 
ant>  tbe 
College 


388 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaoino 


Ube  Cits, 
tbe 

Cfourcb, 
an&  tbe 
College 


sermons !  (Ah,  these  poor  helpless  Sundays !) 
Paper-philosophy  and  axioms.  Chimes  of 
bells  to  call  the  people  to  paper-philosophy  and 
axioms!  "Canst  thou  not,"  said  I  to  my  soul, 
' '  guide  me  to  a  Man,  to  a  door  that  leads  to  a 
Man — a  world-lover  or  prophet  ? ' '  Then  I  fled 
(I  always  do  after  a  course  of  churches)  to  the 
hills  from  whence  cometh  strength.  David 
tried  to  believe  this.  I  do  sometimes,  but 
hills  are  great,  still,  coldly  companionable, 
rather  heartless  fellows.  I  know  in  my  heart 
that  all  the  hills  on  earth,  with  all  their  halos 
on  them,  their  cities  of  leaves,  and  circles  of 
life,  would  not  take  the  place  to  me,  in  mystery, 
closeness,  illimitableness,  and  wonder — of  one 
man. 

And  when  I  turn  from  the  world  of  affairs 
and  churches,  to  the  world  of  scholarship,  I 
cannot  say  that  I  find  relief.  Even  scholar- 
ship, scholarship  itself,  is  under  a  stone  most 
of  it,  prone  and  pale  and  like  all  the  rest,  under 
The  Emphasis  of  Things.  Scholarship  is  get- 
ting to  be  a  mere  huge  New  York,  infinite 
rows  and  streets  of  things,  taught  by  rows  of 
men  who  have  made  themselves  over  into 
things,  to  another  row  of  men  who  are  trying 
to  make  themselves  over  into  things.  I  visit 
one  after  the  other  of  our  great  colleges,  with 
their  forlorn,  lonesome  little  chapels,  cosy- 
corners  for  God  and  for  the  humanities,  their 
vast  Thing-libraries,  men  like  dots  in  them, 
their  great  long,  reached-out  laboratories,  stables 


©utsffcers 


389 


for  truth,  and  I  am  obliged  to  confess  in  spirit 
that  even  the  colleges,  in  all  ages  the  strong- 
holds of  the  human  past,  and  the  human  future, 
the  citadels  of  manhood,  are  getting  to  be  great 
man-blind  centres,  shambles  of  souls,  places 
for  turning  every  man  out  from  himself,  every 
man  away  from  other  men,  making  a  Thing  of 
him  —  or  at  best  a  Columbus  for  a  new  kind  of  fly, 
or  valet  to  a  worm,  or  tag  or  label  on  Matter. 
When  one  considers  that  it  is  a  literal,  scien- 
tific, demonstrable  fact  that  there  is  not  a  single 
evil  that  can  be  named  in  modern  life,  social, 
religious,  political,  or  industrial,  which  is  not 
based  on  the  narrowness  and  blindness  of 
classes  of  men  toward  one  another,  it  is  very 
hard  to  sit  by  and  watch  the  modern  college  al- 
most everywhere,  with  its  silent,  deadly  Thing- 
emphasis  upon  it,  educating  every  man  it  can 
reach,  into  not  knowing  other  men,  into  not 
knowing  even  himself. 


VI 

©uteifcers 


One  cannot  but  look  with  deep  pleasure  at 
first,  and  with  much  relief,  upon  these  healthy 
objective  modern  men  of  ours.  The  only  way 
out,  for  spiritual  hardihood,  after  the  world-sick 
Middle  Ages,  was  a  Columbus,  a  vast  splendid 
train  of  Things  after  him,  of  men  who  empha- 
sised Things,  —  who  could  emphasise  Things. 


Ub« 

Outsi&ers 


39° 


Xost  Brt  ot 


ttbe 

OutstJ>crs 


It  is  a  great  spectacle  and  a  memorable  one — 
the  one  we  are  in  to-day,  the  spectacle  of  the 
wonder  that  men  are  doing  with  Things,  but 
when  one  begins  to  see  that  it  is  all  being 
turned  around,  that  it  is  really  a  spectacle  of 
what  Things  are  doing  with  men,  one  wakes 
with  a  start.  One  wonders  if  there  could  be 
such  a  thing  as  having  all  the  personalities  of 
a  whole  generation  lost.  One  looks  sus- 
piciously and  wistfully  at  the  children  one  sees 
in  the  schools.  One  wonders  if  they  are  going 
to  be  allowed,  like  their  fathers  and  mothers, 
to  have  personalities  to  lose.  I  have  all  but 
caught  myself  kidnapping  children  as  I  have 
watched  them  flocking  in  the  street.  I  have 
wanted  to  scurry  them  off  to  the  country,  a 
few  of  them,  almost  anywhere  —  for  a  few 
years.  I  have  thought  I  would  try  to  find  a 
college  to  hide  them  in,  some  back-county, 
protected  college,  a  college  which  still  has  the 
emphasis  of  Persons  as  well  as  the  emphasis  of 
Things  upon  it.  Then  I  would  wait  and  see 
what  would  come  of  it.  I  would  at  least  have 
a  little  bevy  of  great  men  perhaps,  saved  out 
for  a  generation,  enough  to  keep  the  world 
supplied  with  samples — to  keep  up  the  bare 
idea  of  the  great  man,  a  kind  of  isthmus  to  the 
future. 

The  test  of  civilisation  is  what  it  produces — 
its  man,  if  only  because  he  produces  all  else. 
If  we  have  all  made  up  our  minds  to  allow  the 
specialist  to  set  the  pace  for  us,  either  to  be 


ttbe  ©utsifcers  39i 

specialists  ourselves  or  vulgarly  to  compete 
with  specialists,  for  the  right  of  living,  or  get- 
ting a  living,  there  is  going  to  be  a  crash 
sometime.  Then  a  sense  of  emptiness  after  the 
crash  which  will  call  us  to  our  senses.  The 
specialist's  view  of  the  world  logically  narrows 
itself  down  to  a  race  of  nonentities  for  nothings. 
And  even  if  a  thing  is  a  thing,  it  is  a  nothing 
to  a  nonentity.  And  if  it  is  the  one  business 
of  the  specialist  to  obtain  results,  and  we  are 
all  browbeaten  into  being  specialists,  but  one 
result  is  going  to  be  possible.  It  is  obvious 
that  the  man  who  is  willing  to  sacrifice  the 
most  is  going  to  have  the  most  success  in  the 
race,  crowd  out  and  humiliate  or  annihilate 
the  others.  If  this  is  to  be  the  world,  it  is 
only  men  who  are  ready  to  die  for  nothing  in 
order  to  create  nothing  who  will  be  able  to 
secure  enough  of  nothing  to  rule  it.  One 
wonders  how  long  ruling  such  a  world  will  be 
worth  while,  a  world  which  has  accepted  as 
the  order  of  the  day  success  by  suicide,  the 
spending  of  manhood  on  things  which  only  by 
being  men  we  can  enjoy — the  method  of  forg- 
ing boilers  and  getting  deaf  to  buy  violins,  of 
having  elevated  railways  for  dead  men,  wire- 
less telegraphs  for  clods,  gigantic  printing- 
presses  for  men  who  have  forgotten  how  to  read. 
"  lyet  us  all,  by  all  means,  make  all  things 
for  the  world."  So  we  set  ourselves  to  our 
task  cheerfully,  the  task  of  attaining  results  for 
people  at  large  by  killing  people  in  particular 


392 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReaoing 


Ube 

Outsiders 


off.  We  are  getting  to  be  already,  even  in 
the  arts,  men  with  one  sense.  We  have  classes 
even  in  colour.  Schools  of  painters  are  founded 
by  men  because  they  have  one  seventh  of  a 
sense  of  sight.  Schools  of  musicians  divide 
themselves  off  into  fractions  of  the  sense  of 
sound,  and  on  every  hand  men  with  a  hundred 
and  forty-three  million  cells  in  their  brains, 
become  noted  (nobodies)  because  they  only 
use  a  hundred  and  forty-three.  "  What  is  the 
use  of  attaining  results,"  one  asks,  "of  mak- 
ing such  a  perfectly  finished  world,  when  there 
is  not  a  man  in  it  who  would  pay  any  attention 
to  it  as  a  world  ?  "  If  the  planet  were  really  be- 
ing improved  by  us,  if  the  stars  shone  better 
by  our  committing  suicide  to  know  their  names, 
it  might  be  worth  while  for  us  all  to  die,  per- 
haps, to  make  racks  of  ourselves,  frames  for 
souls  (one  whole  generation  of  us),  in  one 
single,  heroic,  concerted  attempt  to  perfect  a 
universe  like  this,  the  use  and  mastery  of  it. 
But  what  would  it  all  come  to?  Would  we 
not  still  be  left  in  the  way  on  it,  we  and  our 
children,  lumbering  it  up,  soiling  and  disgrac- 
ing it,  making  a  machine  of  it  ?  There  would 
be  no  one  to  appreciate  it.  Our  children  would 
inherit  the  curse  from  us,  would  be  more  like 
us  than  we  are.  If  any  one  is  to  appreciate  this 
world,  we  must  appreciate  it  and  pass  the  old 
secret  on. 

No  one  seems  to  believe  in  appreciating — 
appreciating  more  than  one  thing,  at  least. 


TTbe  ©utsifcers 


393 


The  practical  disappearance  in  any  vital  form 
of  the  lecture-lyceum,  the  sermon,  the  essay, 
and  the  poem,  the  annihilation  of  the  imagina- 
tion or  organ  of  comprehension,  the  disappear- 
ance of  personality,  the  abolition  of  the  edi- 
torial, the  temporary  decline  of  religion,  of 
genius,  of  the  artistic  temperament,  can  all  be 
summed  up  and  symbolised  in  a  single  trait  of 
modern  life,  its  separated  men,  interested  in 
separate  things.  We  are  getting  to  be  lovers 
of  contentedly  separate  things,  little  things  in 
their  little  places  all  by  themselves.  The  mod- 
ern reader  is  a  skimmer,  a  starer  at  pictures, 
like  a  child,  while  he  reads,  never  thinking  a 
whole  thought,  a  lover  of  peeks  and  paragraphs, 
as  a  matter  of  course.  Except  in  his  money- 
making,  or  perhaps  in  the  upper  levels  of 
science,  the  typical  modern  man  is  all  para- 
graphs, not  only  in  the  way  he  reads,  but 
in  the  way  he  lives  and  thinks.  Outside  of 
his  specialty  he  is  not  interested  in  anything 
more  than  one  paragraph's  worth.  He  is  as 
helpless  as  a  bit  of  protoplasm  before  the  sight 
of  a  great  many  very  different  things  being 
honestly  put  together.  Putting  things  to- 
gether tires  him.  He  has  no  imagination, 
because  he  has  the  daily  habit  of  contentedly 
seeing  a  great  many  things  which  he  never  puts 
together.  He  is  neither  artistic  nor  original  nor 
far-sighted  nor  powerful,  because  he  has  a  para- 
graph way  of  thinking,  a  scrap-bag  of  a  soul, 
because  he  cannot  concentrate  separate  things, 


TTbe 

Outsiders 


394 


OLost  Hrt  of  IReaoina 


©utsi&crs 


cannot  put  things  together.    He  has  no  person- 
ality because  he  cannot  put  himself  together. 

It  is  significant  that  in  the  days  when  per- 
sonalities were  common  and  when  very  power- 
ful, interesting  personalities  could  be  looked 
up,  several  to  the  mile,  on  almost  any  road 
in  the  land,  it  was  not  uncommon  to  see  a 
business  letter-head  like  this: 


General  Merchandise, 

Dry  Goods,  Notions,  Hats, 

Shoes,  Groceries,  Hardware,  Coffins 

and  Caskets,  Livery  and 

Feed  Stable. 

Physician  and  Surgeon. 

Justice  of  the  Peace,  Licensed  to  Marry. 


If,  as  it  looks  just  at  present,  the  nation  is 
going  to  believe  in  arbitration  as  the  general 
modern  method  of  adjustment,  that  is,  in  the 
all-siding  up  of  a  subject,  the  next  thing  it  will 
be  obliged  to  believe  in  will  be  some  kind  of  an 
institution  of  learning  which  will  produce  arbi- 
trators, men  who  have  two  or  three  perfectly 
good,  human  sides  to  their  minds,  who  have 
been  allowed  to  keep  minds  with  three  dimen- 
sions. The  probabilities  are  that  if  the  mind 
of  Socrates,  or  any  other  great  man,  could  have 
an  X-ray  put  on  it,  and  could  be  thrown  on  a 
canvas,  it  would  come  out  as  a  hexagon,  or  an 
almost-circle,  with  lines  very  like  spokes  on 
the  inside  bringing  all  things  to  a  centre. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  deny,  in  the  present 


©utstfcers 


395 


emphasis  of  Things,  that  we  are  making  and 
inspiring  all  Things  except  ourselves  in  a  way 
that  would  make  the  Things  glad.  The  trouble 
is  that  Things  are  getting  too  glad.  They  are 
turning  around  and  making  us.  Nearly  every 
man  in  college  is  being  made  over,  mind  and 
body,  into  a  sort  of  machine.  When  the  col- 
lege has  finished  him,  and  put  him  on  the 
market,  and  one  wonders  what  he  is  for,  one 
learns  he  is  to  do  some  very  little  part,  of  some 
very  little  thing,  and  nothing  else.  The  local 
paper  announces  with  pride  that  in  the  new 
factory  we  have  for  the  manufacture  of  shoes 
it  takes  one  hundred  and  sixty-three  machines 
to  make  one  shoe — one  man  to  each  machine. 
I  ask  myself,  "If  it  takes  one  hundred  and 
sixty-three  machines  to  make  one  shoe,  how 
many  machines  does  it  take  to  make  one 
man?" 

The  Infinite  Face  of  The  Street  goes  by  me 
night  and  day.  To  and  fro,  its  innumerable 
eyes,  always  the  sound  of  footsteps  in  my  ears, 
out  of  all  these — jostling  our  shoulders,  hidden 
from  our  souls,  there  waits  an  All-man,  a  great 
man,  I  know,  as  always  great  men  wait,  whose 
soul  shall  be  the  signal  to  the  latent  hero  in  us 
all,  who,  standing  forth  from  the  machines  of 
learning  and  the  machines  of  worship,  that 
spread  their  noise  and  network  through  all  the 
living  of  our  lives,  shall  start  again  the  old 
sublime  adventure  of  keeping  a  Man  upon  the 
earth.  He  shall  rouse  the  glowing  crusaders, 


Ube 

Outsiders 


396 


%ost  Hrt  ot 


Ube 

Outsibetrs 


the  darers  of  every  land,  who  through  the 
proud  and  dreary  temples  of  the  wise  shall  go, 
with  the  cry  from  Nazareth  on  their  lips, 
"  Woe  unto  you  ye  men  of  learning,  ye  have 
taken  away  the  key  of  knowledge,  ye  have  en- 
tered not  in  yourselves  and  them  that  were  en- 
tering in,  ye  have  hindered,"  and  the  mighty 
message  of  the  one  great  scholar  of  his  day 
who  knew  a  God :  ' '  Whether  there  be  pro- 
phecies they  shall  fail,  whether  there  be  tongues 
they  shall  cease,  whether  there  be  knowledge 
it  shall  vanish  away.  Though  I  speak  with 
the  tongues  of  men  and  of  angels,  and  have 
not  love,  I  am  become  as  sounding  brass  and 
tinkling  cymbal,  .  .  ." 

I  do  not  forget  of  Him,  whose  "i,  IF  i  BE 
LIFTED  UP  "  is  the  hail  of  this  modern  world, 
that  there  were  men  of  letters  in  those  far-off 
days,  when  once  He  walked  with  us,  who, 
sounding  their  brass  and  tinkling  their  cym- 
bals, asked  the  essentially  ignorant  question 
of  all  outsiders  of  knowledge  in  every  age — 
"  How  knoweth  this  man  letters,  never  having 
learned  ? ' ' 

As  I  lay  on  my  bed  in  the  night 

They  came 

Pale  with  sleep — 

The  faces  of.  all  the  living 

As  though  they  were  dead  ; 

"What  is  Power?"  they  cried, 

Souls  th  at  were  lost  from  their  masters  while  they  slept — 

Trooping  through  my  dream, 

"What  is  Power?" 


tbe  MorlD  ZTooetber 


397 


Now  these  nineteen  hundred  years  since  the  Boy 
In  the  temple  with  The  Doctors 
Still  the  wind  of  faces  flying 
Through  the  spaces  of  my  dream, 
"  WHAT  is  POWER?  "  they  cried. 


VII 

tbe  TKHorlfc 


It  is  not  necessary  to  decry  science,  but  it 
should  be  cried  on  the  housetops  of  education, 
the  world  around  in  this  twentieth  century, 
that  science  is  in  a  rut  of  dealing  solely  with 
things  and  that  the  pronoun  of  science  is  It. 
While  it  is  obvious  that  neuter  knowledge 
should  have  its  place  in  any  real  scheme  of 
life,  it  is  also  obvious  that  most  of  us,  making 
locomotives,  playing  with  mist,  fire  and  water 
and  lightning,  and  the  great  game  with  mat- 
ter, should  be  allowed  to  have  sex  enough  to 
be  men  and  women  a  large  part  of  the  time,  the 
privilege  of  being  persons,  perchance  gods,  sur- 
mounting this  matter  we  know  so  much  about, 
rather  than  becoming  like  it. 

The  next  great  move  of  education  —  the  one 
which  is  to  be  expected  —  is  that  the  educated 
man  of  the  twentieth  century  is  going  to  be 
educated  by  selecting  out  of  all  the  bare  know- 
ledges the  warm  and  human  elements  in  them. 
He  is  going  to  work  these  over  into  a  relation 
to  himself  and  when  he  has  worked  them  over 


1Reat>ing 
tbe  TOoi-16 
Uogetber 


OLost  Hrt  of 


•Reading 

tbe  tUorlS 
Uogetber 


into  relation  to  himself,  he  is  going  to  work 
them  over  through  himself  into  every  one  else 
and  read  the  world  together. 

It  is  because  the  general  habit  of  reading  for 
persons,  acquiring  one's  knowledge  naturally 
and  vitally  and  in  its  relation  to  life,  has  been 
temporarily  swept  one  side  in  modern  educa- 
tion that  we  are  obliged  to  face  the  divorced 
condition  of  the  educated  world  to-day.  There 
seem  to  be,  for  the  most  part,  but  two  kinds 
of  men  living  in  it,  living  on  opposite  sides  of 
the  same  truths  glaring  at  each  other.  On 
the  one  hand  the  aneemically  spiritual,  broad, 
big,  pallid  men,  and  on  the  other  the  funny, 
infinitesimal,  provincial,  matter  cornered,  mat- 
ter-of-fact ones. 

However  useless  it  may  seem  to  be  there  is 
but  one  way  out.  Some  man  is  going  to  come 
to  us,  must  come  to  us,  who  will  have  it  in  him 
to  challenge  these  forces,  do  battle  with  them, 
fight  with  fog  on  one  hand  and  desert  on  the 
other.  There  never  will  be  one  world  in  edu- 
cation until  we  have  one  man  who  can  em- 
phasise persons  and  things  together,  and  do  it 
every  day,  side  by  side,  in  his  own  mind. 
When  there  is  one  man  who  is  an  all-man,  an 
epitome  of  a  world,  there  shall  be  more  all-men. 
He  cannot  help  attracting  them,  drawing  them 
out,  creating  them.  With  enough  men  who 
have  a  whole  world  in  their  hearts,  we  shall 
soon  have  a  whole  world. 

Whether  it  is  true  or  not  that  the  universe  is 


1Reafcfn0  tbe  Worlfc  ftogetber 


399 


most  swiftly  known,  most  naturally  enjoyed  as 
related  to  one  Creator  or  Person,  as  the  self- 
expression  of  one  Being  who  loved  all  these 
things  enough  to  gather  them  together,  it  is 
generally  admitted  that  the  natural  man  seems 
to  have  been  created  to  enjoy  a  universe  as  re- 
lated to  himself.  His  most  natural  and  power- 
ful way  of  enjoying  it  is  to  enjoy  it  in  its 
relation  to  persons.  A  Person  may  not  have 
created  it,  but  it  seems  for  the  time  being  at 
least,  and  so  far  as  persons  are  concerned,  to 
have  been  created  for  persons.  To  know  the 
persons  and  the  things  together,  and  particu- 
larly the  things  in  relation  to  the  persons,  is  the 
swiftest  and  simplest  way  of  knowing  the 
things.  Persons  are  the  nervous  system  of  all 
knowledge.  So  far  as  man  is  concerned  all 
truth  is  a  sub-topic  under  his  own  soul,  and  the 
universe  is  the  tool  of  his  own  life.  Reading 
for  different  topics  in  it  gives  him  a  superficial 
knowledge  of  the  men  who  write  about  them. 
Reading  to  know  the  men  gives  him  a  super- 
ficial knowledge,  in  the  technical  sense,  of  the 
things  they  write  about.  L,et  him  stand  up 
and  take  his  choice  like  a  man  between  being 
superficial  in  the  letter  and  superficial  in  the 
spirit.  Outside  of  his  specialty,  however,  be- 
ing superficial  in  the  letter  will  lead  him  to  the 
most  knowledge.  Man  is  the  greatest  topic. 
All  other  knowledge  is  a  sub-topic  under  a 
Man,  and  the  stars  themselves  are  as  footnotes 
to  the  thoughts  of  his  heart. 


Uogetber 


400 


%ost  Hrt  ot  IReafcing 


•Rca&fng 
tbe  tUorft 
'Cogetber 


"  Things  are  not  only  related  to  other 
things,"  the  soul  of  the  man  says,  "  they  are 
related  to  me. ' '  This  relation  of  things  to  me 
is  a  mutual  affair,  partly  theirs  and  partly 
mine,  and  I  am  going  to  do  my  knowing,  act 
on  my  own  knowledge,  as  if  I  were  of  some 
importance  in  it.  Shall  I  reckon  with  alkalis 
and  acids  and  not  reckon  with  myself?  I  say, 
"O  great  Nature,  O  infinite  Things,  by  the 
charter  of  my  soul  (and  whether  I  have  a  soul 
or  not),  I  am  not  only  going  to  know  things, 
but  things  shall  know  me.  I  stamp  myself 
upon  them.  I  shall  receive  from  them  and 
love  them  and  belong  to  them,  but  they  shall 
be  my  things  because  they  are  things,  and  they 
shall  be  to  me,  what  I  make  them."  "The 
sun  is  thy  plaything,"  my  soul  says  to  me, 
"O,  mighty  Child,  the  stars  thy  companions. 
Stand  up!  Come  out  in  the  day!  laugh  the 
great  winds  to  thy  side.  The  sea,  if  thou  wilt 
have  it  so,  is  thy  frog-pond  and  thou  shalt  play 
with  the  lightnings  in  thy  breast." 

"  Aye,  aye,"  I  cry,  "I  know  it!  The 
youth  of  the  world  seizes  my  whole  being.  I 
hurrah  like  a  child  through  all  knowledge.  I 
have  taken  all  heaven  for  my  nursery.  The 
world  is  my  rocking-horse.  Things  are  not 
only  for  things,  and  my  body  in  the  end  for 
things,  but  now  I  live,  I  live,  and  things 
are  for  me! "  "  Aye,  aye,  and  they  shall  be 
to  thee,"  said  my  soul,  "what  thou  biddest 
them." 


tbe  Moris  IToaetber 


401 


And  now  I  go  forth  quietly.  ' '  Do  you  not 
see,  O  mountains,  that  you  must  reckon  with 
me  ?  I  am  the  younger  brother  of  the  stars. 
I  have  faced  nations  in  my  heart.  Great 
bullying,  hulking,  half-dead  centuries  I  have 
faced.  I  have  made  them  speak  to  me,  and 
have  dared  against  them.  If  there  is  history, 
I  also  am  history.  If  there  are  facts,  I  also 
am  a  fact.  If  there  are  laws,  it  is  one  of  the 
laws  that  I  am  one  of  the  laws." 

All  knowledge,  I  have  said  in  my  heart,  in- 
stead of  being  a  kind  of  vast  overseer- and-slave 
system  for  a  man  to  lock  himself  up  in,  and 
throw  away  his  key  in,  becomes  free,  fluent, 
daring,  and  glorious  the  moment  it  is  conceived 
through  persons  and  for  persons  and  with  per- 
sons. Knowledge  is  not  knowledge  until  it  is 
conceived  in  relation  to  persons;  that  is,  in 
relation  to  all  the  facts.  Persons  are  facts 
also  and  on  the  whole  the  main  facts,  the 
facts  which  for  seventy  years,  at  least,  or  until 
the  planet  is  too  cooled  off,  all  other  facts  are 
for.  The  world  belongs  to  persons,  is  related 
to  persons,  and  all  the  knowledge  thereof,  and 
by  heaven,  and  by  my  soul's  delight,  all  the 
persons  the  knowledge  is  related  to  shall  be- 
long to  me,  and  the  knowledge  that  is  related 
to  them  shall  belong  to  me,  the  whole  human 
round  of  it.  The  spirit  and  rhythm  and  song 
of  their  knowledge,  the  thing  in  it  that  is  real 
to  them,  that  sings  out  their  lives  to  them,  shall 
sing  to  me. 


•RcaMng 
tbe  tUoi-15 
Uogetber 


403 


Book  IV 
TKIlbat  to  2)o  flejt 

I  am  he  who  tauntingly  compels  men,   women, 

nations, 
Crying,  '  Leap  from  your  seats  and  contend  for  your 

lives  ! '  " 


See  IReyt  Chapter 

IT  is  good  to  rise  early  in  the  morning,  when 
the  world  is  still  respectable  and  nobody 
has  used  it  yet,  and  sit  and  look  at  it,  try  to 
realise  it.  One  sees  things  very  differently. 
It  is  a  kind  of  yawn  of  all  being.  One  feels 
one's  soul  lying  out,  all  relaxed,  on  it,  and 
resting  on  real  things.  It  stretches  itself  on 
the  bare  bones  of  the  earth  and  knows.  On  a 
hundred  silent  hills  it  lies  and  suns  itself. 

And  as  I  lay  in  the  morning,  soul  and  body 
reaching  out  to  the  real  things  and  resting  on 
them,  I  thought  I  heard  One  Part  of  me,  down 
underneath,  half  in  the  light  and  half  in  the 
dark,  laughing  softly  at  the  Other.  ' '  What  is 
this  book  of  yours?  "  it  said  coldly,  "  with  its 
proffered  scheme  of  education,  its  millenniums 
and  things  ?  What  do  you  think  this  theory, 
this  heaven-spanning  theory  of  reading  of 
yours,  really  is,  which  you  have  held  up  ob- 
jectively, almost  authoritatively,  to  be  looked 


405 


See  tAcit 
Cbaptcr 


406 


Xost  Hrt  of 


See  •next 

Cbapter 


at  as  truth  ?  Do  you  think  it  is  anything  after 
all  but  a  kind  of  pallid,  unreal,  water-colour 
exhibition,  a  row  of  blurs  of  faintly  coloured 
portraits  of  yourself,  spiead  on  space?  Do 
you  not  see  how  unfair  it  is — this  spinning  out 
of  one's  own  little  dark,  tired  inside,  a  theory 
for  a  wide  heaven  and  earth,  this  straddling 
with  one  temperament  a  star  ?  " 

Then  I  made  myself  sit  down  and  compose 
what  I  feared  would  be  a  strictly  honest  title- 
page  for  this  book.  Instead  of: 

THE  LOST  ART  OF  READING 

A  STUDY 

OF 
EDUCATION 

BY 
ETC. 

I  wrote  it : 

HOW  TO  BE  MORE  LIKE  ME 

A   SHY 

AT 
EDUCATION 

BY 
ETC. 

And  when  I  had  looked  boldly  (almost 
scientifically)  at  this  title-page,  let  it  mock  me 
a  little,  had  laughed  and  sighed  over  it,  as  I 
ought,  there  came  a  great  hush  from  I  know 
not  where.  I  remembered  it  was  the  title, 


See  "Wejt  Cbapter 


407 


after  all,  for  better  or  worse,  in  some  sort  or 
another,  of  every  book  I  had  craved  and  de- 
lighted in,  in  the  whole  world.  Then  suddenly 
I  found  myself  before  this  book,  praying  to  it, 
and  before  every  struggling  desiring-book  of 
every  man,  of  other  men,  where  it  has  prayed 
before,  and  I  dared  to  look  my  title  in  the  face. 
I  have  not  denied — I  do  not  need  to  deny — 
that  what  I  have  uncovered  here  is  merely  my 
own  soul's  glimmer — my  interpretation — at  this 
mighty,  passing  show  of  a  world,  and  it  comes 
to  you,  Oh  Gentle  Reader,  not  as  I  am,  but  as  I 
would  like  to  be.  Out  of  chaos  it  struggles  to 
you,  and  defeat— can  you  not  see  it? — and  if  but 
the  benediction  of  what  I,  or  you,  or  any  man 
would  like  to  be  will  come  and  rest  on  it,  it  is 
enough.  Take  it  first  and  last,  it  is  written  in 
every  man's  soul,  be  his  theory  whatsoever  it 
may  of  this  great  wondering  world  —  wave 
after  wave  of  it,  shuddering  and  glorying  over 
him — it  is  written  after  all  that  he  does  not 
know  that  anything  is,  can  be,  or  has  been  in 
this  world  until  he  possesses  it,  or  misses  pos- 
sessing it  himself — feels  it  slipping  from  him. 
It  is  in  what  a  man  is,  has,  or  might  have,  that 
he  must  track  out  his  promise  for  a  world.  His 
life  is  his  prayer  for  the  ages  as  long  as  he  lives, 
and  what  he  is,  and  what  he  is  trying  to  be, 
sings  and  prays  for  him,  says  masses  for  his 
soul  under  the  stars,  and  in  the  presence  of  all 
peoples,  when  he  is  dead.  By  this  truth,  I 
and  my  book  with  you,  Gentle  Reader,  must 


Set  Hext 
Cbapter 


408 


Xost  Hrt  of 


See  meit 
Chapter 


stand  or  fall.  Even  now  as  I  bend  over  the 
click  of  my  typewriter,  the  years  rise  dim  and 
flow  over  me  out  of  the  east,  .  .  .  genera- 
tions of  brothers,  out  of  the  mist  of  heaven  and 
out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth,  trooping  across 
the  world,  and  wondering  at  it,  come  and  go, 
and  out  of  all  these  there  shall  not  be  one,  no 
not  one,  Gentle  Reader,  but  shall  be  touched 
and  loved  by  you,  by  me.  In  light  out  of 
shadow  or  in  the  shadow  out  of  the  light,  our 
souls  fleck  them,  fleck  them  with  the  invisible, 
blessing  them  and  cursing  them.  We  shall  be 
the  voices  of  the  night  and  day  to  them,  shall 
live  a  shadow  of  life  with  them,  and  be  the 
sounds  in  their  ears;  did  any  man  think  that 
what  we  are,  and  what  we  are  trying  to  be,  is 
ours,  is  private,  is  for  ourselves  ?  Boundlessly, 
helplessly  scattered  on  the  world,  upon  the 
faces  of  our  fellows,  our  souls  mock  to  us  or 
sing  to  us  forever. 

So  if  I  have  opened  my  windows  to  you,  say 
not  it  is  because  I  have  dared.  It  is  because  I 
have  not  dared.  I  have  said  I  will  protect 
my  soul  with  the  street.  I  will  have  my  vow 
written  on  my  forehead.  I  will  throw  open 
my  window  to  the  passer-by.  Fling  it  in!  I 
beg  you,  oh  world,  whatever  it  is,  be  it  prayer 
or  hope  or  jest.  It  is  mine.  I  have  vowed 
to  live  with  it,  to  live  out  of  it — so  long  as 
I  feel  your  footsteps  under  my  casement,  and 
know  that  your  watch  is  upon  my  days,  and 
that  you  hold  me  to  myself.  I  have  taken  for 


See  "ftejt  Cbapter 


409 


my  challenge  or  for  my  comrade,  I  know  not 
which,  a  whole  world. 

And  what  shall  a  man  give  in  exchange  for 
a  whole  world  ? 

And  my  soul  said  "  He  shall  not  save  nor 
keep  back  himself." 

Who  is  the  Fool — that  I  should  be  always 
taking  all  this  trouble  for  him, — tiptoeing  up 
and  down  the  world  with  my  little  cover  over 
my  secret  for  him  ?  To  defy  a  Fool,  I  have 
said,  speak  your  whole  truth.  Then  God 
locks  him  out.  To  hide  a  secret,  have  enough 
of  it.  Hide  it  outdoors.  Why  should  a  man 
take  anything  less  than  a  world  to  hide  in? 
If  a  soul  is  really  a  soul,  why  should  it  not  fall 
back  for  its  reserve  on  its  own  infinity  ?  God 
does.  Even  daisies  do  it.  It  is  too  big  a 
world  to  be  always  bothering  about  one's  secret 
in  it.  "  Who  has  time  for  it  ?  "  I  have  said. 
"  Give  it  out.  Move  right  on  living.  Get 
another."  The  only  way  for  a  man  in  this 
twentieth  century  to  hide  his  soul  is  by  letting 
it  reach  out  of  sight.  Not  by  locks,  nor  by 
stiflings,  nor  by  mean  little  economizings  of 
the  heart  does  a  man  earn  a  world  for  a  com- 
rade. Let  the  laughers  laugh.  On  the  great 
still  street  in  space  where  souls  are, —  who 
cares  ? 


See  tAcit 
Cbapter 


OLost  art  of  IReaotna 


II 
Diagnosis 

Compelled  as  I  am,  as  most  of  us  are,  to  wit- 
ness the  unhappy  spectacle,  in  every  city  of  the 
land,  of  a  great  mass  of  unfortunate  and  muti- 
lated persons  whirled  round  and  round  in  rows, 
in  huge  reading-machines,  being  crunched  and 
educated,  it  is  very  hard  not  to  rush  thought- 
lessly in  to  the  rescue  sometimes,  even  if  one 
has  nothing  better  than  such  a  pitiful,  helpless 
thing  as  good  advice. 

I  am  afraid  it  does  not  look  very  wise  to  do 
it.  Civilisation  is  such  a  vast,  hypnotising, 
polarising  spectacle,  has  the  stage  so  fully  to 
itself,  everybody's  eyes  glued  on  it,  it  is  hard 
to  get  up  and  say  what  one  thinks  in  it.  One 
cannot  find  anything  equally  objective  to  say 
it  with.  One  feels  as  if  calling  attention  to 
one's  self,  to  the  little,  private,  shabby  theatre 
of  one's  own  mind.  It  is  as  if  in  a  great  theatre 
(on  a  back  seat  in  it)  one  were  to  get  up  and 
stand  in  his  chair  and  get  the  audience  to 
turn  round,  and  say,  ' '  Ladies  and  gentlemen. 
That  is  not  the  stage,  with  the  foot-lights  over 
there.  This  is  the  stage,  here  where  I  am. 
Now  watch  me  twirl  my  thumbs." 

But  the  great  spectacle  of  the  universal 
reading-machine  is  too  much  for  me.  Before 
I  know  it  I  try  to  get  the  audience  to  turn 
around. 


Diagnosis  4" 

The  spectacle  of  even  a  single  lad,  in  his 
more  impressionable  and  possible  years,  read- 
ing a  book  whether  he  has  anything  to  do  with 
it  or  not,  in  spite  of  the  author  and  in  spite  of 
himself,  when  one  considers  how  many  books 
he  might  read  which  really  belong  to  him,  is 
enough  to  make  a  mere  reformer  or  outlaw  or 
parent- interferer  of  any  man  who  is  compelled 
to  witness  it. 

But  it  seems  that  the  only  way  to  interfere 
with  one  of  these  great  reading-machines  is  to 
stop  the  machine.  One  would  say  theoretically 
that  it  would  not  take  very  much  to  stop  it — a 
mere  broken  thread  of  thought  would  do  it,  if 
the  machine  had  any  provision  for  thoughts. 
As  it  is,  one  can  only  stand  outside,  watch  it 
through  the  window,  and  do  what  all  outsiders 
are  obliged  to  do,  shout  into  the  din  a  little 
good  advice.  If  this  good  advice  were  to  be 
summed  up  in  a  principle  or  prepared  for  a 
text-book  it  would  be  something  like  this: 

The  whole  theory  of  our  prevailing  education 
is  a  kind  of  unanimous,  colossal,  "  I  can't," 
"You  can't";  chorus,  "We  all  of  us  to- 
gether can't."  The  working  principle  of  pub- 
lic-school education,  all  the  way  from  its  biggest 
superintendents  or  overseers  down  to  its  littlest 
tow-heads  in  the  primary  rooms,  is  a  huge, 
overbearing,  overwhelming  system  of  not  ex- 
pecting anything  of  anybody.  Everything  is 
arranged  throughout  with  reference  to  not-ex- 
pecting, and  the  more  perfectly  a  system  works 


412  OLost  art  of  TReaMng 

Eclipse  without  expecting,  or  needing  to  expect,  the 
more  successful  it  is  represented  to  be.  The 
public  does  not  expect  anything  of  the  poli- 
ticians. The  politicians  do  not  expect  anything 
of  the  superintendents.  The  superintendents 
do  not  expect  anything  of  the  teachers,  and 
the  teachers  do  not  expect  anything  of  the 
pupils,  and  the  pupils  do  not  expect  anything 
of  themselves.  That  is  to  say,  the  whole  edu- 
cational world  is  upside  down, — so  perfectly 
and  regularly  and  faultlessly  upside  down  that 
it  is  almost  hopeful.  All  one  needs  to  do  is  to 
turn  it  accurately  and  carefully  over  at  every 
point  and  it  will  work  wonderfully. 

To  turn  it  upside  down,  have  teachers  that 
believe  something. 

Ill 

Eclipse 

When  it  was  decreed  in  the  course  of  the 
nineteenth  century  that  the  educational  world 
should  pass  over  from  the  emphasis  of  persons 
to  the  emphasis  of  things,  it  was  decreed  that  a 
generation  that  could  not  emphasise  persons 
in  its  knowledge  could  not  know  persons.  A 
generation  which  knows  things  and  does  not 
know  persons  naturally  believes  in  things  more 
than  it  believes  in  persons. 

Even  an  educator  who  is  as  forward-looking 
and  open  to  human  nature  as  President  Charles 


Eclipse  413 

F.  Thwing,  with  all  his  emphasis  of  knowing 
persons  and  believing  in  persons  as  a  basis  for 
educational  work,  seems  to  some  of  us  to  give 
an  essentially  unbelieving  and  pessimistic 
classification  of  human  nature  for  the  use  of 
teachers. 

"  Early  education,"  says  President  Thwing, 
"occupies  itself  with  description  (geometry, 
space,  arithmetic,  time,  science,  the  world  of 
nature).  Later  education  with  comparison 
and  relations."  If  one  asks,  "  Why  not  both 
together?  Why  learn  facts  at  one  time  and 
their  relations  at  another  ?  Is  it  not  the  most 
vital  possible  way  to  learn  facts  to  learn  them 
in  their  relations  ?  " — the  answer  that  would  be 
generally  made  reveals  that  most  teachers  are 
pessimists,  that  they  have  very  small  faith  in 
what  can  be  expected  of  the  youngest  pupils. 
The  theory  is  that  interpretative  minds  must 
not  be  expected  of  them.  Some  of  us  find  it 
very  hard  to  believe  as  little  as  this,  in  any 
child.  Most  children  have  such  an  incorrigible 
tendency  for  putting  things  together  that  they 
even  put  them  together  wrong  rather  than  not 
put  them  together  at  all.  Under  existing  edu- 
cational conditions  a  child  is  more  of  a  philos- 
opher at  six  than  he  is  at  twenty-six. 

The  third  stage  of  education  for  which  Dr. 
Thwing  partitions  off  the  human  mind  is  the 
"stage  in  which  a  pupil  becomes  capable  of 
original  research,  a  discoverer  of  facts  and  re- 
lations" himself.  In  theory  this  means  that 


414 


Xost  Hrt  of  IReabing 


when  a  man  is  thirty  years  old  and  all  possible 
habits  of  originality  have  been  trained  out  of 
him,  he  should  be  allowed  to  be  original.  In 
practice  it  means  removing  a  man's  brain  for 
thirty  years  and  then  telling  him  he  can  think. 
There  never  has  been  a  live  boy  in  a  school  as 
yet  that  would  allow  himself  to  be  educated  in 
this  way  if  he  could  help  it.  All  the  daily 
habits  of  his  mind  resent  it.  It  is  a  pessi- 
mistic, postponing  way  of  educating  him.  It 
does  not  believe  in  him  enough.  It  may  be  true 
of  men  in  the  bulk,  men  by  the  five  thousand, 
that  their  intellectual  processes  happen  along  in 
this  conveniently  scientific  fashion,  at  least  as 
regards  emphasis,  but  when  it  is  applied  to  any 
individual  mind,  at  any  particular  time,  in 
actual  education,  it  is  found  that  it  is  not  true, 
that  it  is  pessimistic.  God  is  not  so  monoto- 
nous and  the  universe  is  not  graded  as  accu- 
rately as  a  public  school,  and  things  are  much 
more  delightfully  mixed  up.  If  a  great  uni- 
versity were  to  give  itself  whole-heartedly  and 
pointedly  to  one  single  individual  student,  it 
would  find  it  both  convenient  and  pleasant  and 
natural  and  necessary  to  let  him  follow  these 
three  stages  all  at  once,  in  one  stage  with  one 
set  of  things,  and  in  another  stage  with  another. 
Everyone  admits  that  the  first  thing  a  genius 
does  with  such  a  convenient,  three-part  sys- 
tem, or  chart  for  a  soul,  is  to  knock  it  endwise. 
He  does  it  because  he  can.  Others  would  if 
they  could.  He  insists  from  his  earliest  days 


Eclipse 


415 


on  doing  all  three  parts,  everything,  one  set 
of  things  after  the  other — description,  compari- 
son, creation,  and  original  research  sometimes 
all  at  once.  He  learns  even  words  all  ways  at 
once.  All  of  these  processes  are  applied  to  each 
thing  that  a  genius  learns  in  his  life,  not  the 
three  parts  of  his  life.  One  might  as  well  say 
to  a  child,  ' '  Now,  dear  little  lad,  your  life  is 
going  to  be  made  up  of  eating,  sleeping,  and 
living.  You  must  get  your  eating  all  done  up 
now,  these  first  ten  years,  and  then  you  can 
get  your  sleeping  done  up,  and  then  you  can 
take  a  spell  at  living  —  or  putting  things  to- 
gether." 

The  first  axiom  of  true  pedagogics  is  that 
nothing  can  be  taught  except  the  outside  or 
letter  of  a  thing.  The  second  axiom  is  that 
there  is  nothing  gained  in  teaching  a  pupil  the 
outside  of  a  thing  if  he  has  not  the  inside — 
the  spirit  or  relations  of  it.  Teachers  do  not 
dare  to  believe  this.  They  think  it  is  true 
only  of  men  of  genius.  They  admit  that  men 
of  genius  can  be  educated  through  the  inside 
or  by  calling  out  the  spirit,  by  drawing  out 
their  powers  of  originality  from  the  first,  but 
they  argue  that  with  common  pupils  this  pro- 
cess should  not  be  allowed.  They  are  not 
worthy  of  it.  That  is  to  say,  the  more  ordinary 
men  are  and  the  more  they  need  brains,  the 
less  they  shall  be  allowed  to  have  them. 

Inasmuch,  then,  as  the  inside  cannot  be 
taught  and  there  is  no  object  in  teaching  the 


Eclipse 


416 


Xost  Hrt  of 


Eclipse  outside,  the  question  remains  how  to  get  the 
right  inside  at  work  producing  the  right  out- 
side. This  is  a  purely  spiritual  question  and 
brings  us  to  the  third  axiom.  Every  human 
being  born  into  the  world  is  entitled  to  a  special 
study  and  a  special  answer  all  to  himself.  If, 
as  President  Thwing  very  truly  says,  ' '  The 
higher  education  as  well  as  the  lower  is  to  be 
organised  about  the  unit  of  the  individual  stu- 
dent, ' '  what  follows  ?  The  organisation  must 
be  such  as  to  make  it  possible  for  every  teacher 
to  study  and  serve  each  individual  student  as  a 
special  being  by  himself.  In  other  words,  if 
this  last  statement  of  Dr.  Thwing's  is  to  be 
acted  on,  it  makes  havoc  with  his  first.  It  re- 
quires a  somewhat  new  and  practically  revo- 
lutionary organisation  in  education.  It  will 
be  an  organisation  which  takes  for  its  basic 
principle  something  like  this: 

Viz. :  The  very  essence  of  an  average  pupil 
is  that  he  needs  to  be  studied  more,  not  less, 
than  any  one  else  in  order  to  find  his  master- 
key,  the  master-passion  to  open  his  soul  with. 
The  essence  of  a  genius  is  that  almost  any  one 
of  a  dozen  passions  can  be  made  the  motive 
power  of  his  learning.  His  soul  is  opening 
somewhere  all  the  time. 

The  less  individuality  a  student  has,  the 
more  he  is  like  other  students,  the  more  he 
should  be  kept  away  from  other  students  until 
what  little  individuality  he  has  has  been 
brought  out.  It  is  not  only  equally  true  of  the 


Eclipse  417 

ordinary  man  as  well  as  of  the  man  of  genius 
that  he  must  educate  himself,  but  it  is  more 
true.  Other  people's  knowledge  can  be  poured 
into  and  poured  over  a  genius  innocently 
enough.  It  rolls  off" him  like  water  on  a  duck's 
back.  Even  if  it  gets  in,  he  organically  pro- 
tects himself.  The  genius  of  the  ordinary  man 
needs  special  protection  made  for  it.  As  our 
educational  institutions  are  arranged  at  pre- 
sent, the  more  commonplace  our  students  are 
the  more  we  herd  them  together  to  make  them 
more  commonplace.  That  is,  we  do  not  be- 
lieve in  them  enough.  We  believe  that  they 
are  commonplace  through  and  through,  and 
that  nothing  can  be  done  about  it.  We  admit, 
after  a  little  intellectual  struggle,  that  a  genius 
(who  is  bound  to  be  an  individual  anyway) 
should  be  treated  as  one,  but  a  common  boy, 
whose  individuality  can  only  be  brought  out  by 
his  being  very  vigorously  and  constantly  re- 
minded of  it,  and  exercised  in  it,  is  dropped 
altogether  as  an  individual,  is  put  into  a  herd 
of  other  common  boys,  and  his  last  remaining 
chance  of  being  anybody  is  irrevocably  cut  off. 
We  do  not  believe  in  him  as  an  individual. 
He  is  a  fraction  of  a  roomful.  He  is  a  6yth  or 
734th  of  something.  Some  one  has  said  that  the 
problem  of  education  is  getting  to  be,  How  can 
we  give,  in  our  huge  learning-machines,  our  ex- 
ceptional students  more  of  a  chance  ?  I  state  a 
greater  problem :  How  can  we  give  our  common 
students  a  chance  to  be  exceptional  ones  ? 


418 


OLost  art  ot 


The  problem  can  only  be  solved  by  teachers 
who  believe  something,  who  believe  that  there 
is  some  common  ground,  some  spiritual  law  of 
junction,  between  the  man  of  genius,  the  nat- 
ural or  free  man,  and  the  cramped,  z.  e.,  arti- 
ficial, ordinary  one.  It  would  be  hard  to  name 
any  more  important  proposition  for  current 
education  to  act  on  than  this,  that  the  nat- 
ural man  in  this  world  is  the  man  of  genius. 
The  Church  has  had  to  learn  that  religion  does 
not  consist  in  being  unnatural.  The  schools 
are  next  to  learn  that  the  man  of  genius  is 
not  unnatural.  He  is  what  nature  intended 
every  man  to  be,  at  the  point  where  his  genius 
lies.  The  way  out  in  education,  the  only  be- 
lieving, virile,  man's  way  out,  would  seem  to 
be  to  begin  with  the  man  of  genius  as  a  prin- 
ciple and  work  out  the  application  of  the 
principle  to  more  ordinary  men — men  of  slowed- 
down  genius.  We  are  going  to  use  the  same 
methods — faster  or  slower — for  both.  A  child's 
greater  genius  lies  in  his  having  a  more  lively 
sense  of  relation  with  more  things  than  other 
children.  Teachers  are  going  to  believe  that 
if  the  right  thing  can  be  done  about  it,  this 
sense  of  a  live  relation  to  knowledge  can  be 
uncovered  in  every  human  soul,  that  there 
is  a  certain  sense  in  which  every  man  is  his 
own  genius.  ' '  By  education, ' '  said  Hel vetius, 
"  you  can  make  bears  dance,  but  never  create 
a  man  of  genius."  The  first  thing  for  a 
teacher  who  believes  this  to  do,  is  not  to  teach. 


Bpocalgpse  419 


IV 


There  is  a  spirit  in  this  book,  struggling 
down  underneath  it,  which  neither  I  nor  any 
other  man  shall  ever  express.  It  needs  a  na- 
tion to  express  it,  a  nation  fearless  to  know 
itself,  a  great,  joyous,  trustful,  expectant  na- 
tion. The  centuries  break  away.  I  almost 
see  it  now,  lifting  itself  in  its  plains  and  hills 
and  fields  and  cities,  in  its  smoke  and  cloud- 
land,  as  on  some  huge  altar,  to  supreme  destiny, 
a  nation  freed  before  heaven  by  the  mighty, 
daily,  childlike  joy  of  its  own  life.  I  see  it  as 
a  nation  full  of  personalities,  full  of  self-con- 
tained, normally  self-centred,  self-delighted, 
self-poised  men  —  men  of  genius,  men  who  bal- 
ance off  with  a  world,  men  who  are  capable  of 
being  at  will  magnificently  self-conscious  or 
unconscious,  self-possessed  and  self-  forgetful  — 
balanced  men,  comrades  and  equals  of  a  world, 
neither  its  slaves  nor  its  masters. 

I  have  said  I  will  not  have  a  faith  that  I 
have  to  get  to  with  a  trap-door.  I  have  said 
that  inspiration  is  for  everybody.  I  have  had 
inspiration  myself  and  I  will  not  clang  down  a 
door  above  my  soul  and  believe  that  God  has 
given  to  me  or  to  any  one  else  what  only  a  few 
can  have.  I  do  not  want  anything,  I  will  not 
have  anything  that  any  one  cannot  have.  If 
there  is  one  thing  rather  than  another  that 


420 


Xost  Hrt  of  TReaoina 


Bpocaa 


inspiration  is  for,  it  is  that  when  I  have  it  I 
know  that  any  man  can  have  it.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  my  selfishness  that  he  shall  have  it.  If 
a  great  wonder  of  a  world  like  this  is  given  to 
a  man,  and  he  is  told  to  live  on  it  and  it  is  not 
furnished  with  men  to  live  with,  with  men  that 
go  with  it,  what  is  it  all  for?  If  one  could 
have  one's  choice  in  being  damned  there  would 
be  no  way  that  would  be  quite  so  quick  and 
effective  as  having  inspirations  that  were  so 
little  inspired  as  to  make  one  suppose  they 
vrere  merely  for  one's  self  or  for  a  few  others. 
The  only  way  to  save  one's  soul  or  to  keep  a 
corner  for  God  in  it  is  to  believe  that  He  is  a 
kind  of  God  who  has  put  inspiration  in  every 
man.  All  that  has  to  be  done  with  it,  is  to  get 
him  to  stop  smothering  it. 

Inspiration,  instead  of  being  an  act  of  going 
to  work  in  a  minute,  living  a  few  hundred 
years  at  once,  an  act  of  making  up  and  creating 
a  new  and  wonderful  soul  for  one's  self,  con- 
sists in  the  act  of  lifting  off  the  lid  from  the 
one  one  has.  The  mere  fact  that  the  man  ex- 
ists who  has  had  both  experiences,  not  having 
inspiration  and  having  it,  gives  a  basis  for 
knowledge  of  what  inspiration  is.  A  man  who 
has  never  had  anything  except  inspiration  can- 
not tell  us  what  it  is,  and  a  man  who  has  never 
had  it  cannot  tell  us  what  it  is;  but  a  man  who 
has  had  both  of  these  experiences  (which  is 
the  case  with  most  of  us)  constitutes  a  cross- 
section  of  the  subject,  a  symbol  of  hope  for 


Bpocalspse 


421 


every  one.  All  who  have  had  not-inspirations  Hpoca. 
and  inspirations  both  know  that  the  origin 
and  control  and  habit  of  inspiration,  are  all  of 
such  a  character  as  to  suggest  that  it  is  the 
common  property  of  all  men.  All  that  is 
necessary  is  to  have  true  educators  or  promot- 
ers, men  who  furnish  the  conditions  in  which 
the  common  property  can  be  got  at. 

The  only  difference  between  men  of  genius 
— men  of  genius  who  know  it — and  other  men 
— men  of  genius  who  don't  know  it — is  that  the 
men  of  genius  who  know  it  have  discovered 
themselves,  have  such  a  headlong  habit  of  self- 
joy  in  them,  have  tasted  their  self-joys  so 
deeply,  that  they  are  bound  to  get  at  them 
whether  the  conditions  are  favourable  or  not. 
The  great  fact  about  the  ordinary  man's  genius, 
which  the  educational  world  has  next  to  reckon 
with,  is  that  there  are  not  so  many  places  to 
uncover  it.  The  ordinal y  man  at  first,  or  until 
he  gets  the  appetite  started,  is  more  particular 
about  the  conditions. 

It  is  because  a  man  of  genius  is  more  thor- 
ough with  the  genius  he  has,  more  spiritual 
and  wilful  with  it  than  other  men,  that  he 
grows  great.  A  man's  genius  is  always  at  bot- 
tom religious,  at  the  point  where  it  is  genius, 
a  worshipping  toward  something,  a  worship- 
ping toward  something  until  he  gets  it,  a  su- 
preme covetousness  for  God,  for  being  a  God. 
It  is  a  faith  in  him,  a  sense  of  identity  and  shar- 
ing with  what  seems  to  be  above  and  outside, 


422 


%ost  Hrt  of  IReaoina 


Hpoca- 


a  sense  of  his  own  latent  infinity.     I  have  said 


reaj  teaching  js  for>  js  ^o  say  to 
a  man,  in  countless  ways,  a  countless  "You 
can."  And  I  have  said  that  all  real  learning 
is  for  is  to  say  "  I  can."  When  we  have 
enough  great  "  I  can's,"  there  will  be  a  great 
society  or  nation,  a  glorious  "  We  can  "  rising 
to  heaven.  This  is  the  ideal  that  hovers  over 
all  real  teaching  and  makes  it  deathless,  —  fer- 
tile for  ever. 

If  the  world  could  be  stopped  short  for  ten 
years  in  its  dull,  sullen  round  of  not  believing 
in  itself,  if  it  could  be  allowed  to  have,  all  of 
it,  all  over,  even  for  three  days,  the  great 
solemn  joy  of  letting  itself  go,  it  would  not  be 
caught  falling  back  very  soon,  I  think,  into 
its  stupor  of  cowardice.  It  would  not  be  the 
same  world  for  three  hundred  years.  All  that 
it  is  going  to  require  to  get  all  people  to  feel 
that  they  are  inspired  is  some  one  who  is  strong 
enough  to  lift  a  few  people  off  of  themselves  — 
get  the  idea  started.  Every  man  is  so  busy 
nowadays  keeping  himself,  as  he  thinks,  prop- 
erly smothered,  that  he  has  not  the  slightest 
idea  of  what  is  really  inside  him,  or  of  what 
the  thing  that  is  really  inside  him  would  do  with 
him,  if  he  would  give  it  a  chance.  Any  man 
who  has  had  the  experience  of  not  having  in- 
spiration and  the  experience  of  having  it  both 
knows  that  it  is  the  sense  of  striking  down 
through,  of  having  the  lid  of  one's  smaller 
consciousness  lifted  off.  In  the  long  run  his 


apocalypse  423 


inspiration  can  be  had  or  not  as  he  wills.  He  upoca- 
knows  that  it  is  the  supreme  reasonableness  in 
him,  the  primeval,  underlying  naturalness  in 
him,  rising  to  its  rights.  What  he  feels  when 
he  is  inspired  is  that  the  larger  laws,  the  laws 
above  the  other  laws,  have  taken  hold  of  him. 
He  knows  that  the  one  law  of  inspiration  is 
that  a  man  shall  have  the  freedom  of  himself. 
Most  problems  and  worries  are  based  on  de- 
fective, uninvoked  functions.  Some  organ, 
vision,  taste,  or  feeling  or  instinct  is  not  allowed 
its  vent,  its  chance  to  qualify.  Something 
needs  lifting  away.  The  common  experience 
of  sleeping  things  off,  or  walking  or  working 
them  off,  is  the  daily  symbol  of  inspiration. 
More  often  than  not  a  worry  or  trouble  is 
moved  entirely  out  of  one's  path  by  the  sim- 
plest possible  device,  an  intelligent  or  instinc- 
tive change  of  conditions. 

The  fundamental  heresy  of  modern  educa- 
tion is  that  it  does  not  believe  this— does  not 
believe  in  making  deliberate  arrangements  for 
the  originality  of  the  average  man.  It  does 
not  see  that  the  extraordinary  man  is  simply 
the  ordinary  man  keyed-up,  writ  large  or  mov- 
ing more  rapidly.  What  the  average  man  is 
now,  the  great  men  were  once.  When  we  be- 
gin to  understand  that  a  man  of  genius  is  not 
supernatural,  that  he  is  simply  more  natural 
than  the  rest  of  us,  that  all  the  things  that  are 
true  for  him  are  true  for  us,  except  that  they 
are  true  more  slowly,  the  educational  world 


424 


3Lost  Hrt  of 


Hpocas 


will  be  a  new  world.  The  very  essence  of  the 
creative  power  of  a  man  of  genius  over  other 
men,  is  that  he  believes  in  them  more  than 
they  do.  He  writes,  paints,  or  sings  as  if  all 
other  men  were  men  of  genius,  and  he  keeps 
on  doing  it  until  they  are.  All  modern  human 
nature  is  annexed  genius.  The  whole  world 
is  a  great  gallery  of  things,  that  men  of  genius 
have  seen,  until  they  make  other  men  see  them 
too,  and  prove  that  other  men  can  see  them. 
What  one  man  sees  with  travail  or  by  being 
born  again,  whole  generations  see  at  last  with- 
out trying,  and  when  they  are  born  the  first 
time.  The  great  cosmic  process  is  going  on 
in  the  human  spirit.  Ages  flow  down  from 
the  stars  upon  it.  No  one  man  shall  guess, 
now  or  ever,  what  a  man  is,  what  a  man  shall 
be.  But  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  when  the  world 
gets  its  greatest  man — the  One  who  guesses 
most,  generations  are  born  and  die  to  know 
Him,  all  with  awe  and  gentleness  in  their 
hearts.  One  after  the  other  as  they  wheel  up  to 
the  Great  Sun  to  live, — they  call  Him  the  Son 
of  God  because  He  thought  everybody  was. 

The  main  difference  between  a  great  man 
and  a  little  one  is  a  matter  of  time.  If  the  little 
man  could  keep  his  organs  going,  could  keep 
on  experiencing,  acting,  and  reacting  on  things 
for  four  thousand  years,  he  would  have  no 
difficulty  in  being  as  great  as  some  men  are  in 
their  threescore  and  ten.  All  genius  is  in- 
herited time  and  space.  The  imagination, 


Bpocalgpse 


425 


which  is  the  psychological  substitute  for  time 
and  space,  is  a  fundamental  element  in  all 
great  power,  because,  being  able  to  reach 
results  without  pacing  off  the  processes,  it 
makes  it  possible  for  a  man  to  crowd  more 
experience  in,  and  be  great  in  a  shorter 
time. 

The  idea  of  educating  the  little  man  in  the 
same  way  as  the  great  man,  from  the  inside, 
or  by  drawing  out  his  originality,  meets  with 
many  objections.  It  is  objected  that  inas- 
much as  no  little  men  could  be  made  into 
great  men  in  the  time  allotted,  there  would  be 
no  object  in  trying  to  do  it,  and  no  result  to 
show  for  it  in  the  world,  except  row  after  row 
of  spoiled  little  men,  drearily  waiting  to  die. 
The  answer  to  this  is  the  simple  assertion  that 
if  a  quart-cup  is  full  it  is  the  utmost  a  quart- 
cup  can  expect.  A  hogshead  can  do  no  more. 
So  far  as  the  man  himself  is  concerned,  if  he 
has  five  sound,  real  senses  in  him,  all  of  them 
acting  and  reacting  on  real  things,  if  he  is  alive, 
i.  e.,  sincere  through  and  through,  he  is  edu- 
cated. True  education  must  always  consist, 
not  in  how  much  a  man  has,  but  in  the  way 
he  feels  about  what  he  has.  The  kingdom 
of  heaven  is  on  the  inside  of  his  five  senses. 


Hpocaa 


426 


Xost  Hrt  of  TReaoina 


Ever? 
/Ban  1ft  is 

Own 
Genius 


fIDan  Ibis  ©wn  (Beniue 


I  do  not  mean  by  the  man  of  genius  in  this 
connection  the  great  man  of  genius,  who  takes 
hold  of  his  ancestors  to  live,  rakes  centuries 
into  his  life,  burns  up  the  phosphorus  of  ten 
generations  in  fifty  years,  and  with  giant 
masterpieces  takes  leave  of  the  world  at  last, 
bringing  his  family  to  a  full  stop  in  a  blaze  of 
glory,  and  a  spindling  child  or  so.  I  am  merely 
contending  for  the  principle  that  the  extraord- 
inary or  inspired  man  is  the  normal  man  (at  the 
point  where  he  is  inspired)  and  that  the  ordi- 
nary or  uninspired  boy  can  be  made  like  him, 
must  be  educated  like  him,  led  out  through 
his  self-delight  to  truth,  that,  if  anything,  the 
ordinary  or  uninspired  boy  needs  to  be  edu- 
cated like  a  genius  more  than  a  genius  does. 

I  know  of  a  country  house  which  reminds 
me  of  the  kind  of  mind  I  would  like  to  have. 
In  the  first  place,  it  is  a  house  that  grew.  It 
could  not  possibly  have  been  thought  of  all  at 
once.  In  the  second  place,  it  grew  itself. 
Half  inspiration  and  half  common-sense,  with 
its  mistakes  and  its  delights  all  in  it,  glori- 
ously, frankly,  it  blundered  into  being,  seven 
generations  tumbled  on  its  floors,  filled  it 
with  laughter  and  love  and  tears.  One  felt 
that  every  life  that  had  come  to  it  had  written 
itself  on  its  walls,  that  the  old  house  had 


/IDan  1bts 


Genius 


427 


broken  out  in  a  new  place  for  it,  full  of  new 
little  joys  everywhere,  and  jogs  and  bays  and 
afterthoughts  and  forethoughts,  old  roofs  and 
young  ones  chumming  together,  and  old  chim- 
neys (three  to  start  with  and  four  new  ones 
that  came  when  they  got  ready).  Everything 
about  it  touched  the  heart  and  said  something. 
I  have  never  managed  to  see  it  yet,  whether  in 
sunlight,  cloud-light,  or  starlight,  or  the  light 
of  its  own  lamps,  but  that  it  stood  and  spoke. 
It  is  a  house  that  has  genius.  The  genius  of 
the  earth  and  the  sky  around  it  are  all  in  it, 
of  motherhood,  of  old  age,  and  of  little  children. 
It  grew  out  of  a  spirit,  a  loving,  eager,  putting- 
together,  a  making  of  relations  between  things 
that  were  apart, — the  portrait  of  a  family.  It  is 
a  very  beautiful,  eloquent  house,  and  hundreds 
of  nights  on  the  white  road  have  I  passed  it  by, 
in  my  lonely  walk,  and  stopped  and  listened  to 
it,  standing  there  in  its  lights,  like  a  kind  of 
low  singing  in  the  trees,  and  when  I  have  come 
home,  later,  on  the  white  road,  and  the  lights 
were  all  put  out,  I  still  feel  it  speaking  there, 
faint  against  heaven,  with  all  its  sleep,  its 
young  and  old  sleep,  its  memories  and  hopes 
of  birth  and  death,  lifting  itself  in  the  night,  a 
prayer  of  generations. 

Many  people  do  not  care  for  it  very  much. 
They  would  wonder  that  I  should  like  a  mind 
like  it.  It  is  a  wandering-around  kind  of  a 
house,  has  thirty  outside  doors.  If  one 
does  n't  like  it,  it  is  easy  to  get  out  (which  is 


Ever? 

/Ban  f>f0 

Cwn 

Oenfus 


428 


%ost  Hrt  of  IReaoino 


/Dan  Ibie 

Own 
Oentus 


just  what  I  like  in  a  mind).  Stairways  almost 
anywhere,  only  one  or  two  places  in  the  whole 
building  where  there  is  not  a  piazza.,  and  every 
inch  of  piazza,  has  steps  down  to  the  grass  and 
there  are  no  walks.  A  great  central  fireplace, 
big  as  a  room,  little  groups  of  rooms  that  keep 
coming  on  one  like  surprises,  and  little  groups 
of  houses  around  outside  that  have  sprung  up 
out  of  the  ground  themselves.  A  flower  gar- 
den that  thought  of  itself  and  looks  as  if  it  took 
care  of  itself  (but  doesn't).  Everything  ex- 
uberant and  hospitable  and  free  on  every  side 
and  full  of  play, — a  high  stillness  and  serious- 
ness over  all. 

I  cannot  quite  say  what  it  is,  but  most 
country  houses  look  to  me  as  if  they  had  for- 
gotten they  were  really  outdoors,  in  a  great, 
wide,  free,  happy  place,  where  winds  and  suns 
run  things,  where  not  even  God  says  nay,  and 
everything  lives  by  its  inner  law,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  others,  exults  in  its  own  joy  and 
plays  with  God.  Most  country  homes  forget 
this.  They  look  like  little  isles  of  glare  and 
showing  off,  and  human  joylessuess,  dotting 
the  earth.  People's  minds  in  the  houses  are 
like  the  houses  :  they  reek  with  propriety. 
That  is,  they  are  all  abnormal,  foreign  to  the 
spirit,  to  the  passion  of  self-delight,  of  life,  of 
genius.  Most  of  them  are  fairly  hostile  to  gen- 
ius or  look  at  it  with  a  lorgnette. 

I  like  to  think  that  if  the  principles  and 
habits  of  freedom  that  result  in  genius  were  to 


jflDan  Ibis  ©wn  Genius 


429 


be  gauged  and  adjusted  toward  bringing  out 
the  genius  of  ordinary  men,  they  would  result 
in  the  following: 

Recipe  to  make  a  great  man  (or  a  live  small 
one) :  Let  him  be  made  like  a  great  work  of 
art.  In  general,  follow  the  rule  in  Genesis  i. 

1.  Chaos. 

2.  Enough  Chaos;  that  is,  enough  kinds  of 
Chaos.     Pouring  all  the  several  parts  of  Chaos 
upon  the  other  parts  of  Chaos. 

3.  Watch  to  see  what  emerges  and  what  it  is 
in  the  Chaos  that  most  belongs  to  all  the  rest, 
what  is  the  Unifying  Principle. 

4.  Fertilise  the  Chaos.     Let  it  be  impreg- 
nated with  desire,  will,  purpose,  personality. 

5.  When    the  Unifying  Principle    is    dis- 
covered, refrain  from  trying  to  force  every- 
thing to  attach  itself  to  it.     Let  things  attach 
themselves  in  their  way  as  they  are  sure  to  do 
in  due  time  and  grow  upon  it.     Let  the  mind 
be  trusted.      Let  it  not  be  always  ordered 
around,  thrust  into,  or  meddled  with.     The 
making  of  a  man,  like  the  making  of  a  work  of 
art,  consists  in  giving  the  nature  of  things  a 
chance,  keeping  them  open  to  the  sun  and  air 
and  the  springs  of  thought.     The  first  person 
who  ever  said  to  man,  ' '  You  press  the  button 
and  I  will  do  the  rest,"  was  God. 

The  emphasis  of  art  in  our  modern  educa- 
tion, of  the  knack  or  science  or  how  of  things, 
is  to  be  followed  next  by  the  emphasis  of  the 
art  that  conceals  art,  genius,  the  norm  and 


/Dan  This 

Own 
Ocnlus 


43° 


OLost  Hrt  of  1Reaoin0 


Hn 

Inclined 
plane 


climax  of  human  ability.  Any  finishing-school 
girl  can  out-sonnet  Keats.  The  study  of  ap- 
pearances, the  passion  for  the  outside  has  run 
its  course.  The  next  thing  in  education  is 
going  to  be  honesty,  fearless  naturalness,  up- 
heaval, the  freedom  of  self,  self -expectancy, 
all-expectancy,  and  the  passion  for  possessing 
real  things.  The  personalities,  persons  with 
genius,  persons  with  free-working,  uncramped 
minds,  are  all  there,  ready  and  waiting,  both 
in  teachers  and  pupils,  all  growing  sub  rosa, 
and  the  main  thing  that  is  left  to  do  is  to  lift 
the  great  roof  of  machinery  off  and  let  them 
come  up.  The  days  are  already  upon  us  when 
education  shall  be  taken  out  of  the  hands  of 
anaemic,  abstracted  men  —  men  who  go  into 
everything  theory-end  first.  There  is  already 
a  new  atmosphere  in  the  educated  world.  The 
thing  that  shall  be  taught  shall  be  the  love  of 
swinging  out,  of  swinging  up  to  the  light  and 
the  air.  Let  every  man  live,  the  world  says 
next,  a  little  less  with  his  outside,  with  his 
mere  brain  or  logic-stitching  machine.  Let 
him  swear  by  his  instincts  more,  and  live  with 
his  medulla  oblongata. 

VI 

an  Inclined  plane 

"  This  is  a  very  pleasant  and  profitable  ideal 
you  have  printed  in  this  book,  but  teachers  and 


Bn  flnclinet)  plane 


431 


pupils  and  institutions  being  what  they  are,  it 
is  not  practical  and  nothing  can  be  done  about 
it,"  it  is  objected. 

RESPECTFULLY  SUBMITTED 

1.  There  is  nothing  so  practical  as  an  ideal, 
for  if  through  his  personality  and  imagination 
a  man  can  be  made  to  see  an  ideal,  the  ideal 
does  itself;  that  is,  it  takes  hold  of  him  and  in- 
spires him  to  do  it  and  to  find  means  for  doing 
it.     This  is  what  has  been  aimed  at  in  this 
book. 

2.  The  first  and  most  practical  thing  to  do 
with  an  ideal  is  to  believe  it. 

3.  The  next  most  practical  thing  is  to  act 
as  if  one  believed  it.     This  makes  other  peo- 
ple believe  it.     To  act  as  if  one  believed  an 
ideal  is  to  be  literal  with  it,  to  assume  that  it 
can  be  made  real,  that  something — some  next 
thing — can  be  done  with  it. 

4.  It  is  only  people  who  believe  an  ideal  who 
can  make  it  practical.     Educators  who  think 
that  an  ideal  is  true  and  who  do  not  think  it  is 
practical  do  not  think  it  is  true,  do  not  really 
know  it.     The  process  of  knowing  an  ideal,  of 
realising  it  with  the  mind,  is  the  process  of 
knowing  that  it  can  be  made  real.     This  is 
what  makes  it  an  ideal,  that  it  is  capable  of  be- 
coming real,  and  if  a  man  does  not  realise  an 
ideal,  cannot  make  it  real  in  his  mind,  it  is  not 
accurate  for  him  to  say  that  it  is  not  practical. 
It  is  accurate  for  him  to  say  that  it  is  not  prac- 


Bn 

Inclined 
plane 


43  2 


%ost  Hrt  of  IReaofng 


Bn 

Inclined 
plane 


tical  to  him.  The  ideal  presented  in  this  book 
is  not  presented  as  practical  except  to  teachers 
who  believe  it. 

5.  Every  man  has  been  given  in  this  world, 
if  he  is  allowed  to  get  at  them,  two  powers  to 
make  a  man  out  of.     These  powers  are  Vision 
and  Action,      (i)  Seeing,  and  (2)  Being  or 
Doing  what  one  sees.     What  a  man  sees  with, 
is    quite    generally    called    his    imagination. 
What  he  does  with  what  he  sees,  is  called  his 
character  or  personality.     If  it  is  true,  as  has 
been  maintained  in  the  whole  trend  of  this 
book,  that  the  most  important  means  of  educa- 
tion are  imagination  and  personality,  the  power 
of  seeing  things  and  the  power  of  living  as  if 
one  saw  them,  imagination  and  personality 
must  be  accepted  as  the  forces  to  teach  with, 
and  the  things  that  must  be  taught.     The  per- 
sons who  have  imagination  and  personality  in 
modern  life  must  do  the  teaching. 

6.  Parents  and  others  who  believe  in  imagin- 
ation and  personality  as  the  supreme  energies 
of  human  knowledge  and  the  means  of  educa- 
tion, and  who  have  children  they  wish  taught 
in  this  way,  are  going  to  make  connections 
with  such  teachers  and  call  on  them  to  do  it. 

7.  Inasmuch  as  the  best  way  to  make  an 
ideal  that  rests  on  persons  practical  is  to  find 
the  persons,  the  next  thing  for  persons  who 
believe  in  an  ideal  to  do  is  to  find  each  other 
out.     All  persons,  particularly  teachers  and 
parents,  in  their  various  communities  and  in 


an  flnclfnefc  plane 


433 


the  nation,  who  believe  that  the  ideal  is  prac- 
tical in  education  should  be  social  with  their 
ideal,  group  themselves  together,  make  them- 
selves known  and  felt. 

8.  Some  of  us  are  going  to  act  through  the 
schools  we  have.     We  are  going  to  make  room 
in  our  present  over-managed,  morbidly  organ- 
ised institutions,  with  ordered-around  teachers, 
for  teachers  who  cannot  be  ordered  around, 
who  are  accustomed  to  use  their  imaginations 
and  personalities  to  teach    with,   instead  of 
superintendents.     We  are  going  to  have  super- 
intendents who  will  desire  such  teachers.     The 
reason  that  our  over-organised  and  over-super- 
intended schools  and  colleges  cannot  get  the 
teachers  they  want,  to  carry  out  their  ideals, 
is  a  natural  one  enough.     The  moment  ideal 
teachers  are  secured  it  is  found  that  they  have 
ideals  of  their  own  and  that  they  will  not  teach 
without  them.     When  vital  and  free  teachers 
are  attracted  to  the  schools  and  allowed  fair 
conditions  there,  they  will  soon  crowd  others 
out.     The  moment  we  arrange  to  give  good 
teachers  a  chance  good  teachers  will  be  had. 

9.  Others  will  find  it  best  to  act  in  another 
way.     Instead  of  reforming  schools  from  the 
inside,  they  are  going  to  attack  the  problem 
from  the  outside,  start  new  schools  which  shall 
stand  for  live  principles  and  outlive  the  others. 
As  good  teachers  can  arrange  better  conditions 
for  themselves  to  teach  in  their  own  schools, 
wherever  practicable  this  would  seem  to  be  the 


Bn 

Inclines 
plane 


434 


%ost  Hrt  of  IReaotna 


Hn 

flncltnet) 
plane 


better  way.  They  are  going  to  organise  col- 
leges of  their  own.  They  are  going  to  organ- 
ise unorganised  colleges  (for  such  they  would 
be  called  at  first),  assemblings  of  inspired 
teachers,  men  grouping  men  about  them  each 
after  his  kind. 

Every  one  can  begin  somewhere.  Teachers 
who  are  outside  can  begin  outside  and  teachers 
who  are  within  can  begin  within.  Certainly 
if  every  teacher  who  believes  something  will 
believe  deeply,  will  free  himself,  let  himself 
out  with  his  belief,  act  on  it,  the  day  is  not 
long  hence  when  the  great  host  of  ordered- 
around  teachers  with  their  ordered-around 
pupils  will  be  a  memory.  Copying  and  ap- 
pearing to  know  will  cease.  Self-delight  and 
genius  will  again  be  the  habit  of  the  minds  of 
men  and  the  days  of  our  present  poor,  pale, 
fuddling,  unbelieving,  Simon-says-thumbs-up 
education  will  be  numbered. 

Sometimes  it  seems  as  if  this  globe,  this  huge 
cyclorama  of  nations  whirling  in  sunlight 
through  stars,  were  a  mere  empty,  mumbled 
repetition,  a  going  round  and  round  of  the 
same  stupendous  stupidities  and  the  same  hero- 
isms in  human  life.  One  is  always  feeling  as  if 
everything,  arts,  architecture,  cables,  colleges, 
nations,  had  all  almost  literally  happened  before, 
in  the  ages  dark  to  us,  gone  the  same  round  of 
beginning,  struggling,  and  ending.  Then  the 
globe  was  wiped  clean  and  began  again. 


435 


One  of  the  great  advantages  in  emphasising 
individuals,  —  the  main  idea  of  this  book,  —  in 
picking  out  particular  men  as  forces,  centres 
of  energy  in  society,  as  the  basis  for  one's  pro- 
gramme for  human  nature,  is  the  sense  it  gives 
that  things  really  can  begin  again  —  begin  any- 
where —  where  a  man  is.  One  single  human 
being,  deeply  believed  in,  glows  up  a  world, 
casts  a  kind  of  speculative  value,  a  divine  wager 
over  all  the  rest.  I  confess  that  most  men  I  have 
seen  seem  to  me  phantasmagorically  walking 
the  earth,  their  lives  haunting  them,  hanging 
intangibly  about  them  —  indefinitely  postponed. 
But  one  does  not  need,  in  order  to  have  a  true 
joyous  working-theory  of  life,  to  believe  ver- 
batim, every  moment,  in  the  mass  of  men  —  as 
men.  One  needs  to  believe  in  them  very 
much  —  as  possible  men  —  larvae  of  great  men, 
and  if,  in  the  meantime,  one  can  have  (what 
is  quite  practicable)  one  sample  to  a  square 
mile  of  what  the  mass  of  men  in  that  mile 
might  be,  or  are  going  to  be,  one  comes  to  a 
considerable  degree  of  enthusiasm,  a  working 
and  sharing  enthusiasm  for  all  the  rest. 

VII 

Bllone 

I  thought  when  I  began  to  make  my  little 
visit  in  civilisation  —  this  book  —  that  perhaps  I 
ought  to  have  a  motto  to  visit  a  civilisation 


436  Xost  Hrt  ot 


HUone  with.  So  the  motto  I  selected  (a  good  one  for 
all  reformers,  viewers  of  institutions  and  things) 
was,  "  Do  not  shoot  the  organist.  He  is  doing 
the  best  he  can."  I  fear  I  have  not  lived  up 
to  it.  I  am  an  optimist.  I  cannot  believe  he 
is  doing  the  best  he  can.  Before  I  know  it,  I  get 
to  hoping  and  scolding.  I  do  not  even  believe 
he  is  enjoying  it.  Most  of  the  people  in  civili- 
sation are  not  enjoying  it.  They  are  like  peo- 
ple one  sees  on  tally-hos.  They  are  not  really 
enjoying  what  they  are  doing.  They  enjoy 
thinking  that  other  people  think  they  are  en- 
joying it. 

The  great  characteristic  enthusiasm  of  mod- 
ern society,  of  civilisation,  the  fad  of  showing 
off,  of  exhibiting  a  life  instead  of  living  it,  very 
largely  comes,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  from 
the  lack  of  normal  egoism,  of  self-joy  in  civilised 
human  beings.  It  has  come  over  us  like  a  kind 
of  moral  anaemia.  People  cannot  get  interested 
enough  in  anything  to  be  interested  in  it  by 
themselves.  Hence  no  great  art  —  merely  the 
art  which  is  a  trick  or  knack  of  appearance. 
We  lack  great  art  because  we  do  not  believe  in 
great  living. 

The  emphasis  which  would  seem  to  be  most 
to  the  point  in  civilisation  is  that  people  must 
enjoy  something,  something  of  their  very  own, 
even  if  it  is  only  their  sins,  if  they  can  do  no 
better,  and  they  are  their  own.  It  would  be 
a  beginning.  They  could  work  out  from  that. 
They  would  get  the  idea.  Some  one  has  said 


HUons 


that  people  repent  of  their  sins  because  they 
did  n't  enjoy  them  as  much  as  they  expected 
to.  Well,  then,  let  them  enjoy  their  repent- 
ance. The  great  point  is,  in  this  world,  that 
men  must  get  hold  of  reality  somewhere,  some- 
how, get  the  feel,  the  bare  feel  of  living  before 
they  try  dying.  Most  of  us  seem  to  think  we 
ought  to  do  them  both  up  together.  It  is  to 
be  admitted  that  people  might  not  do  really 
better  things  for  their  own  joy,  than  for  other 
people's,  but  they  would  do  them  better.  It 
is  not  the  object  of  this  book  to  reform  people. 
Reformers  are  sinners  enjoying  their  own  sins, 
who  try  to  keep  other  people  from  enjoying 
theirs.  The  object  of  this  book  is  to  inspire 
people  to  enjoy  anything,  to  find  a  principle 
that  underlies  right  and  wrong  both.  Let 
people  enjoy  their  sins,  we  say,  if  they  really 
know  how  to  enjoy.  The  more  they  get  the  idea 
of  enjoying  anything,  the  more  vitally  and  sin- 
cerely they  will  run  their  course — turn  around 
and  enjoy  something  truer  and  more  lasting. 
What  we  all  feel,  what  every  man  feels  is,  that 
he  has  a  personal  need  of  daring  and  happy 
people  around  him,  people  that  are  selfish 
enough  to  be  alive  and  worth  while,  people 
that  have  the  habit  and  conviction  of  joy, 
whose  joys  whether  they  are  wrong  or  right 
are  real  joys  to  them,  not  shadows  or  shows  of 
joys,  joys  that  melt  away  when  no  one  is 
looking. 
The  main  difficulty  in  the  present  juncture 


437 


Hllona 


438  3Lost  Hrt  of 


miions  of  the  world  in  writing  on  the  Lost  Art  of 
Reading  is  that  all  the  other  arts  are  lost,  the 
great  self-delights.  As  they  have  all  been  lost 
together,  it  has  been  necessary  to  go  after  them 
together,  to  seek  some  way  of  securing  condi- 
tions for  the  artist,  the  enjoy  er  and  prophet  of 
human  life,  in  our  modern  time.  At  the  bot- 
tom of  all  great  art,  it  is  necessary  to  believe, 
there  has  been  great,  believing,  free,  beautiful 
living.  This  is  not  saying  that  inconsistency, 
contradiction,  and  insincerity  have  not  played 
their  part,  but  it  is  the  benediction,  the  great 
Amen  of  the  world,  to  say  this,  —  that  if  there 
has  been  great  constructive  work  there  has  been 
great  radiant,  unconquerable,  constructive  liv- 
ing behind  it.  There  is  but  one  way  to  recover 
the  lost  art  of  reading.  It  is  to  recover  the  lost 
art  of  living.  The  day  we  begin  to  take  the 
liberty  of  living  our  own  lives  there  will  be  art- 
ists and  seers  everywhere.  We  will  all  be  art- 
ists and  seers,  and  great  arts,  great  books,  and 
great  readers  of  books  will  flock  to  us. 

Well,  here  we  are,  Gentle  Reader.  We  are 
rounding  the  corner  of  the  last  paragraph. 
Time  stretches  out  before  us.  On  the  great 
highroad  we  stand  together  in  the  dawn  —  I 
with  my  little  book  in  hand,  you,  perhaps, 
with  yours.  The  white  road  reaches  away  be- 
fore us,  behind  us.  There  are  cross-roads. 
There  are  parallels,  too.  Sometimes  when 
there  falls  a  clearness  on  the  air,  they  are 


a  I  Ions 


439 


nearer  than  I  thought.  I  hear  crowds  trudg- 
ing on  them  in  the  dark,  singing  faintly.  I 
hear  them  cheering  in  the  dark. 

But  this  is  my  way,  right  here.  See  the  hill 
there  ?  That  is  my  next  one.  The  sun  in  a 
minute.  You  are  going  my  way,  comrade  ? 
.  .  .  You  are  not  going  my  way  ?  So  be 
it.  God  be  with  you.  The  top  o'  the  morning 
to  you.  I  pass  on. 


Hllons 


WORKS   BY  JOSEPH   McCABE. 


Peter  Abelard. 

8°.     (By  mail,  $2.20.)     Net,  $2.00. 

"  An  ideal  biography." — American  Journal  of  The- 
ology. 

"  An  extensive  view  of  a  great  age,  and  a  fine  sketch 
of  the  greatest  and  most  difficult  character  of  that  age." 
—  World. 

St.  Augustine  and  His  Age. 

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time  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  century  that  saw  that 
Empire  finally  overthrown  by  the  barbarians  of  the 
North.  .  .  .  The  author  has  attempted  to  inter- 
pret the  character  of  his  famous  saint  by  the  light  of 
psychology  rather  than  that  of  theology.  This,  coupled 
with  Dr.  McCabe's  accurate  sense  of  historical  perspec- 
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— Public  Opinion. 

Twelve  Years  in  a  Monastery. 

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This  is  a  new  edition  of  Mr.  Joseph  McCabe's  famous 
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record  of  monastic  life  by  one  no  longer  in  sympathy 
with  the  ideals  of  the  Roman  Church,  this  work  pos- 
sesses a  powerful  interest  for  all  classes  of  readers. 


Hew  York        G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS  London 


Rome  of  To-Day  and  Yesterday; 
The  Pagan  City. 

By  JOHN  DENNIE.  Fifth  edition,  with  5  maps 
and  plans,  and  58  illustrations  from  Roman 
photographs.  Large  8°  ...  $3.50 
Tourists'  Edition.  Flexible  leather,  8°,  gilt 

top $4.50 

"  Rarely  is  so  much  excellent  and  instructive  archaeological 

matter  presented  in  a  style  so  lucid  and  so  instructive." — 

American  Magazine  of  History, 

Rome  and  the  Renaissance: 
The  Pontificate  of  Julius  II. 

Translated  from  the  French  of  JULIAN  KLACZKO, 
by  JOHN  DENNIE.  With  52  illustrations.,  8°. 

The  charm  of  this  book  is  its  strong  personal 
element.  The  author  has  lived  with  his  subject  and 
lived  with  it  many  years,  with  the  result  that  he  has 
written  a  book  of  particular  originality  and  absolutely 
fresh  interest,  although  the  subject  is  familiar. 

It  is  a  story  of  the  Italian  Renaissance  in  art — 
architecture,  sculpture,  and  painting — at  its  most  vic- 
torious period  and  upon  its  most  appropriate  stage. 

The  Art  of  the  Italian  Renaissance. 

A  Handbook  for  the  Use  of  Students,  Trav- 
ellers, and  Readers.     By  Professor  WOLFFLIN, 
of  the  University  of  Munich.     8°.     With  over 
100  illustrations   ....     Net,  $2.25 
This  book  is  designed  for  use  as  a  handbook  for 
students  and  all  lovers  of  Renaissance  Art.     It 
will  prove  valuable  for  travellers  in  connection  with 
the  masterpieces  which  it  describes  ;  and  the  pro- 
fuse and  beautiful  illustrations,  with  the  careful 
explanations  of  the  text,  will  bring  Italy  to  those 
who  wish  to  enjoy  from  their  homes  the  wonders 
of  the  Italian  Renaissance. 


Q.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS 

New  York  and  London 


Old  Paths  and  Legends 
of  New  England  :  :  :  : 

With  many  Illustrations  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay,  Old  Colony,  Rhode  Island, 
and  the  Providence  Plantations,  and  the 
Fresh  River  of  the  Connecticut  I/alley 

By  KATHERINE  M.  ABBOTT 

8°,  very  fully  illustrated,  net,  $ 

THE  idea  for  this  book  grew  out  of  the  fact  that 
Miss  Abbott's  little  paper-bound  Trolley  Trips, 
describing  the  old  New  England  neighborhoods 
that  may  now  be  reached  by  the  trolley,  have  met  with 
an  astonishingly  wide  demand.  In  this  more  pretentious 
work  Miss  Abbott  has  utilized  her  fund  of  material  to 
draw  a  delightful  picture  of  the  quaint  byways  of  New 
England.  But  in  this  case  her  wanderings  are  not  lim- 
ited by  gaps  in  the  trolley  circuit,  or  by  daylight  or  car- 
fares. Historic  spots  of  national  interest,  curious  or 
charming  out-of-the-way  places,  Indian  legends  and 
Yankee  folk-lore  find  full  justice  in  Miss  Abbott's  enter- 
taining pages.  Fiction  could  never  interpret  New 
England  so  honestly  as  does  this  volume. 

G.    P.    PUTNAM'S   SONS 

New  York  London 


The  Hudson  River  from 
Ocean  to  Source  :  :  :  :  : 

Historical       Legendary        Picturesque 
By  EDGAR  MAYHEW  BACON 

Author  of  "  Chronicles  of  Tarrytown,"  etc. 

Large  <y°,  with  over  100  illustrations. 
Net,  $4.50.     By  express,  prepaid, 


NO  stream  in  America  is  so  rich  in  legends  and 
historic  associations  as  the  Hudson.  From 
ocean  to  source  every  mile  of  it  is  crowded 
with  reminders  of  the  early  explorers,  of  the  Indian  wars, 
of  the  struggle  of  the  colonies,  and  of  the  quaint,  peace- 
ful village  existence  along  its  banks  in  the  early  days  of 
the  Republic.  Before  the  explorers  came,  the  river 
figured  to  a  great  extent  in  the  legendary  history  of  the 
Indian  tribes  of  the  East.  Mr.  Bacon  is  well  equipped 
for  the  undertaking  of  a  book  of  this  sort,  and  the  story 
he  tells  is  of  national  interest. 

The  volume  is  illustrated  with  views  taken  especially 
for  this  work  and  with  many  rare  old  prints  now  first 
published  in  book  form. 

G.    P.    PUTNAM'S    SONS 

New  York  London 


xl 


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